Hoteliers: Sarkies Brothers
The word “heritage” is so often appended to hotels today that the word itself it is becoming debased. There are a select few properties in Asia however, that befits the term — hotels in business for a century and more, dating back to the beginnings of tourism in the region. No less than four hotels — the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the Eastern & Oriental in Penang, the Strand in Yangon and Hotel Majapahit in Surabaya — built by one family, the Sarkies brothers.
Early Days
The Sarkies brothers — Martin, Tigran, Aviet and Arshak — were among the first wave of Armenian-Persian refugees fleeing the tyranny and persecution of the Turkish and Russian empires. They came from Isfahan in Persia — modern-day Iran — a long line of Persian merchants, who for centuries had prospered via the ancient trading route known as the Silk Road.
By the 1860s, the Silk Road was in decline and, with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the Sarkies were forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Martin Sarkies, then an engineer, moved to Penang in Malaysia, where Tigran eventually joined him after spending several years trading in Java, Indonesia.
In Europe, Thomas Cook founded the world’s first travel agency in 1872. With Europe more widely accessible, the now-familiar search for the less beaten path began.
