Simon Sio grew up in humble surroundings in the heart of Macao, living in an old building directly across from what was then the city’s grandest accommodation, Hotel Central.
Opened in 1928, it became a prestigious gathering place for celebrities and diplomats in the following decades.
In the 1960s, young Sio would playfully sneak in – it was one of the few places in the former Portuguese colony with air conditioning, a vast, luxurious space compared to the old tenement buildings that surrounded it. But one day, he was thrown out.
“As a kid, I didn’t know better,” Sio tells CNN. “I pointed at the hotel and swore I’d buy it someday.”
Though countless children around the world have made similar vows in the face of perceived injustice, Sio is one of the few to actually follow through with one.
The businessman, now 65, founded his own real estate development company, Lek Hang Group, in 1991. Fast forward to 2024 and Sio could recently be found cutting the ribbon to officially reopen the 96-year-old Hotel Central as its new owner.
But he didn’t buy the hotel out of spite. Sio says he wanted to restore a piece of Macao’s disappearing history, an issue that’s close to his heart.
The grand dame of Macao
In more recent years, luxurious resort complexes and skyscrapers have continuously popped up around Macao. In contrast, the sprawling alleys and old architecture along Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, affectionately called San Ma Lo (translated as ‘The New Road’ in Cantonese) might not look all that exciting today.
But when the road first opened in 1920, it instantly became the city’s most important thoroughfare. Hotel Central, formerly named the President Hotel, opened a few years later and became a key feature of the neighborhood.
“If we talk about Macao’s history, we cannot neglect San Ma Lo. If we talk about San Ma Lo, we cannot neglect Hotel Central,” says Sio.
The mint-colored seven-story hotel was the first building in Macao to have an elevator. In 1932, it became the first hotel in the city to have a two-floor casino. It was expanded to eight floors in 1938 and 11 floors in 1942, making it the tallest hotel in the city.
However, by the 1960s, as competition intensified, Hotel Central began to lose its luster.
“The giant watched me grow up like an elder,” says Sio. “So I had a deep emotional attachment to it. At its peak, it was my idol. As I became older, its decay made my heart uncomfortable.
“Until today, Hotel Central exists as the tallest, largest building on San Ma Lo. I felt that it should embody its power at its fullest potential. So I kept my eye out for opportunities to restore it.”
That opportunity finally came in the 2000s, when the hotel’s two owners decided to sell.
In 2016, Sio completed a seven-year acquisition process and officially became the new owner of the hotel.
That was the first step. Renovating a nearly 100-year-old building is a challenging endeavor, particularly since the additional floors added to Hotel Central in the 1930s and 1940s did not have proper foundation reinforcements. To complicate things further, the building and its adjacent area is a cultural heritage site and situated within the UNESCO-listed historic center, meaning the company couldn’t alter or demolish some structures to fortify its base.
“With nearly 100 years of history, the durability of the cement was limited, and it was clearly long past its prime condition,” says Sio.
The team came up with multiple proposals based on what had been done in the past but none were feasible. In the end, Sio’s team had to invent a new piling method and tested their design multiple times at a construction site in China before setting out to work on Hotel Central.
The developer also used new materials and technologies, such as digital sketching, to recreate the original look of the building.
“We were the first in Macao to try our method,” says Sio.
“When you have no experience, you have to take time for trial and error every step of the way…to stop and come up with solutions when we run into issues, to discuss together how to pivot, before we put in the work.”
After overcoming numerous problems, construction finally began in 2019. Before long, yet another massive challenge got in the way: Covid-19.
But the team soldiered on and the project topped out in 2022.
“We’re all very proud to say that the project was successful in the end,” says Sio, noting that the cost of the restoration was approximately 400 million Macanese Pataca (about $50 million), while the total investment was around 2.2 billion Macanese Pataca (or about $274 million).
‘Macao is not just the Cotai strip’
The newly renovated Hotel Central has 114 rooms with a retro interior design inspired by the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. A qipao rental service gives guests a chance to dress up in traditional clothing to match the vibe of the hotel.
An exhibition called “Historical Cultural Corridor” on the ground floor is already open to the public. Still to come is a small shopping mall, which will sit on the first three floors of the hotel, though an opening date hasn’t been set. The hotel will also house a restaurant, a bakery and a rooftop bar overlooking the skyline of Macao on the top floor.
For Sio, the project’s significance justifies every cent he invested.
“Looking back, projects like Hotel Central on the market are relatively far and few, especially one with such an extensive history,” he says.
“There’s a saying which I tell everyone around me: ‘Money can produce volume, but money cannot reproduce history.’”
Sio hopes that Hotel Central inspires more developers to revitalize Macao’s historical sites and diversify the city’s tourism development beyond its glitzy casino resorts.
“We hope that visitors will have a different view of Macao: Macao is not just the Cotai strip, Macao is so much more,” he says, referring to an area of the city that houses many of the newest and biggest casino resorts.
Only then, he says, will Macao truly become a world-class tourist destination.
But he says he feels positive about the future of Macao’s tourism industry, especially as the government has committed financial resources and invited gaming companies to join the effort to preserve the city’s history.
MGM, which has two casino hotels in Macao, for example, will reportedly collaborate with the government to restore 13 run-down buildings in the 35,000-square-meter (378,000 square feet) Barra District and create an arts and recreation space.
“With so much effort, I believe that we have a chance to produce a good result in a very short amount of time, so let’s wait and see,” says Sio.
“Macao is small. We can’t grow in size. Thirty-three square kilometers is all we have… But small things can be exquisite. So we need to move in the direction of exquisiteness, like a jewel.”
