How Japan’s Section L uses tech and talent to create “fellowship among guests” at its apartment-hotels.

Howard Ho: “The long-term focus of our digital experience will be to guide our guests toward each other, creating opportunities for shared experiences, trip recommendations, neighborhood exploration, etc. Basically, a social network within our hotels where customers can easily contribute to each other’s trips, and harvest the deep crowd intelligence of fellow travellers.”

When Howard Ho was 18 and deciding which university to apply to, he chose hotel school “because I learned that I could take a wines course and drink wine in class every Friday, even before turning 21. That’s a big sell for an 18-year-old,” said the Taiwan-born hotelier.

Fortunately, it all worked out. “I do consider myself lucky because, within the first semester, I knew that I was in the right place. I loved learning about how hotels work, loved learning everything from hotel design, menu engineering to revenue management, brand strategy."

"Spending four years focused on hotels gave me a very grounded business education and most importantly, I loved spending time with fellow hoteliers in and outside of school. The camaraderie among hoteliers has kept me in this industry for the last 20 years.”

Today, Ho is the CEO of Section L, a new-breed Japanese hospitality brand focused on apartment-style accommodation, a company he founded in 2020 with three co-founders. They opened their first apartment-hotel, Section L Ginza East, in July 2020 and have since grown to a total of nine locations across Tokyo. By the end of 2023, they had hosted more than 100,000 guests.

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