Nils-Arne Schroeder brings more than three decades of hospitality leadership experience across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. He joins Langham from Raffles and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, where he most recently held the position of Senior Vice President, Operations for Europe and Africa, having previously led the group’s Middle East and Asia operations.
The bulk of his career was built at Hilton, which he joined in 2001 as Director of Business Development in Beijing, where he steered the hotel’s business mix from leisure towards corporate clientele in the context of the 11 September crisis. He went on to open Hilton’s flagship hotel in Kuala Lumpur, a 500-plus room property that reached the city’s number two RevPAR position within its fourth month of operation, before leading the opening of South Korea’s first Hilton resort and Asia-Pacific’s first integrated international golf resort.
He then led the launch of the Hilton brand in Beijing with the opening of the Hilton Beijing Wangfujing, completed just ahead of the Summer Olympic Games with 100% occupancy for three consecutive weeks, before introducing the luxury Conrad brand to South Korea at the helm of the Conrad Seoul for five years. Appointed Regional General Manager for Indonesia in 2016, he doubled the group’s portfolio in the country and Timor-Leste within three years, before taking global leadership of the Conrad Hotels & Resorts brand, the only global brand head based outside the United States, overseeing more than 40 properties and several pandemic-era openings, including Abu Dhabi, Los Angeles, Tulum and Shanghai.
He subsequently served as Vice President, Luxury & Lifestyle for Asia-Pacific at Hilton, responsible for a portfolio of 32 hotels in operation and 20 in development for the Waldorf Astoria, Conrad and LXR brands, before joining Fairmont and Raffles in 2023.
Bob van den Oord, CEO of Langham Hospitality Group, noted that the breadth of Nils-Arne Schroeder’s experience across regions, cultures and hospitality segments would be a major asset as the group continues its expansion into new destinations, praising his proven ability to meet local market needs without diluting brand identity.
A graduate of Cornell University’s General Managers Program and trained at the Steigenberger Hotelschool, Nils-Arne Schroeder also held commercial leadership roles at InterContinental Hotels Group in Abu Dhabi, Leipzig and Cologne earlier in his career.
