Pan Pacific Hotels Group—controlled by banking and real estate billionaire Wee Cho Yaw’s UOL Group—is selling one of its hotels in Singapore to Midtown Properties, a company owned by tycoon Choo Chong Ngen, founder of the Hotel 81 budget hotel chain, for S$525 million ($389 million).
Choo—who made his fortune in textiles before launching his Hotel 81 chain in Geylang, Singapore’s red-light district—is adding the 542-room Parkroyal Kitchener Hotel, near Little India, off Serangoon Road to his growing hotel empire amid a post-pandemic tourism boom.
Visitor arrivals to Singapore are expected to more than double to as much as 14 million this year from 6.3 million in 2022, according to the Singapore Tourism Board, which expects tourism to rebound to pre-pandemic levels by next year.
Read the full story on Forbes here.