SINGAPORE - It's not so much the idea of getting married that might keep Loh Lik Peng awake some nights.

When the time comes, it would more likely be having to find a venue large enough to accommodate the wedding party.

Ironic and amusing really, since Loh is the owner of two boutique hotels New Majestic Hotel and Hotel 1929 in Singapore’s Chinatown area as well as an as-yet-unnamed one in Little India.

The third he bought this year, and like the others, it is pitched at trendy, high-spending travellers with an eye for design. It is due for completion by the end-2009.

He also has in his stable the award-winning restaurants Majestic and Ember as well as gastrobar Majestic Bar, and Braise, a modern European restaurant at Sentosa’s Palawan Beach.

As if all that is not quite enough, the 36-year-old year spends a lot of time in London where he is restoring an old town hall at Bethnal Green into serviced apartments and a restaurant/bar. He is, he says, also “doing up” a small boutique hotel and restaurant in the South Bund of Shanghai with some friends.

But all these venues are not going to be of much personal use because when he gets married, because “it’s not just about me, but my parents”, he says. That is, he would need a much larger venue to accommodate his parents’ guests.

From lawyer to hotelier

Loh is very close to his family, and constantly turns to his parents for advice in major business decisions. Dad is a paediatrician and mum an ophthalmologist but, he says, the “family always had an interest in property”.

Not that he had ever thought he would be a hotelier (although Loh would rather be called an entrepreneur). He was a corporate lawyer who gave up his practice at the end of 2003, at the height of the last downturn.

“All I was doing was bankruptcy and liquidation work, which got quite depressing. As a lawyer you are always solving somebody else’s problems and I wanted to do something for myself.”

It was then that he was offered five conservation houses along Keong Saik Street that would be reborn as Hotel 1929. The 32-room hotel was his first project and Loh says it was a case of “learning along the way. We must have done everything wrong”.

But this is a man who admits he just “does his own thing”. He said: “If I look back five, six years if I had listened to all the advice given me, I wouldn’t have done it. You go with your gut feeling. If something looks stupid, chances are, it is.”

Loh’s instincts have paid off. With its art deco interior design wired to ultra modern gizmos, the hotel has led The Washington Post to muse: “May it be Singapore’s second funkiest tourist attraction after the airport?”

The 30-room New Majestic described as “so chic, it hurts” soon followed.

Loh is probably the youngest hotelier in Singapore, but one whose presence has been welcomed by the more experienced ones, given that he now sits on the board of the Singapore Hospitality Association and Shatec.

The others see him as “a breath of fresh air,” he said.

“Certainly not as a threat (as) the size of our hotels is so small, about one-tenth of the size of their hotels.”

Laid-back guy

The better part of his formative years was spent in Dublin in Ireland. When he was 12, Loh was shipped off to a boarding school in the mountains called St Columba’s College (his father’s alma mater) where he studied till he was 18.

“My parents definitely wanted me to be a doctor initially,” he says.

Loh’s older sister is a paediatrician. His younger sister, an architect, now helps out with his projects.

Loh describes himself as a “pretty laid back guy” the result no doubt of an idyllic childhood in a big family bungalow in the East surrounded by pets. He still lives there with his parents (“like a good Chinese boy”) surrounded, at last count, by three dogs, two cats and four tortoises.

It was at college overseas that he acquired his by now well-known penchant for chairs.

“I probably have more than 50 collectible chairs. I have not counted recently,” he admits.

Some of the pieces are for use in the lobby of the New Majestic, among them “ a few very special pieces such as a pair of vintage Ox chair by Hans Wegner and the Cone Chair by Verner Panton”.

The chair-buying has stopped, but the intensity at which he works has not abated. He promises himself that after the London project comes on stream next year, he is going to take a break.

“The last year and a half (I) did not have much chance to breathe, we kept adding numbers. I would stop doing this if I didn’t enjoy it.

“But for now, at the end of the day, I am usually thinking about what I have to do tomorrow. I am a procrastinator. A lot of the planning for tomorrow is for the stuff I missed out today.”

There should be a long vacation due for the once-active sportsman who counts skiing and diving as favourite activities.

And a wedding to plan? - TODAY/ar