Chronicle No. 53 · People
Four Brothers from Isfahan Who Built the Grand Hotels of the East
Raffles, the Eastern & Oriental and the Strand were all the work of one Armenian family from Persia.
The most famous hotels of colonial Southeast Asia were not built by the British. They were built by four Armenian brothers born in Isfahan, in Persia.
The Sarkies brothers were Martin (1852-1912), Tigran (1861-1912), Aviet (1862-1923) and Arshak (1868-1931). They arrived in the East as traders and stayed as innkeepers.
It started small. On 15 April 1884, Tigran, then twenty-three, opened the Eastern Hotel in George Town, Penang. What followed over the next twenty years is one of the most remarkable building runs in hospitality history:
- 1887 - Raffles Hotel, Singapore
- 1889 - the Eastern & Oriental Hotel, Penang, formed by merging their earlier houses
- 1901 - the Strand Hotel, Rangoon
- 1905 - the Crag Hotel on Penang Hill
- 1910 - Hotel Oranje in Surabaya, opened by Martin's son Lucas
Their formula was consistent: a long white seafront facade, deep verandahs, punkahs and later electric fans, a bar that became the town's unofficial club, and staff who knew every ship's arrival. They were selling reassurance to people a very long way from home.
The empire did not survive the family. After Arshak died on 9 January 1931, a bankruptcy case was filed against Raffles Hotel that June, and the Sarkies lost control of what they had made.
The buildings outlived them. So did the name - Sarkies Road in Singapore, Sarkies Corner at the E&O.
Four men who belonged to no empire built the places where empire came to drink. It is worth remembering when we talk about who is qualified to run a hotel: the answer has rarely been the people already inside the room.
Lesson: Great hospitality businesses are usually built by outsiders who understand travellers because they have been travellers themselves.
