Asia Pacific’s next hotel-investment star has a clear runway to Singapore. Nominations are now open for the 2026 Rising Star Award Asia Pacific, which will be presented at HICAP in October.
The award is run by the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, in partnership with the Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific. Its job is simple and important. It finds young people who are already shaping hotel deals, development plans and investment decisions across the region.
This is not a trophy for turning up, smiling nicely and surviving the buffet queue. The winner must have real form. HICAP says the award recognises emerging talent and future leadership, with nominees assessed on achievement, impact and recommendation.
The 2026 winner will be honoured at HICAP, held from 20 to 22 October 2026 at the Fairmont Singapore and Swissotel The Stamford. HICAP remains one of the region’s key hotel investment gatherings, bringing owners, investors, executives and advisers into the same room, where bright ideas either find backing or quietly return to the car park.
Candidates must be 35 or younger and born on or after 23 October 1991. They must have at least 5 years of experience in hotel development or investment-related work, including at least 1 year with their current company. They must also be living and working in Asia-Pacific or South Asia, with at least 2 years’ experience in that market.
There is one more useful guardrail. Candidates must be nominated by someone from their organisation or by a person with direct work experience with them. In other words, no self-coronation, no LinkedIn trumpet solo, and no “my mum says I’m brilliant” paperwork.
Completed nominations are due on or before midnight Singapore Time on 14 August 2026. Past winners include Karan Mahesh, Stella Blythe, Vicky Jian, Calvin Li, Siddhant Jhunjhunwala, Corey Hamabata, Daniel Yip, Kieran Bestall, Peter Harper, Kiichi Mashita, Nihat Ercan and Christopher Hur.
For hotel leaders, the message is plain. If a young colleague is already doing the heavy lifting, reading the numbers, winning trust and keeping calm when the market sneezes, nominate them. Stars rarely need more glitter. They need a fair stage.
By: Anne Keam – © 2026.
Read Time: 2 minutes.
Author Bio:
Anne Keam’s story begins in Queensland, on a grain farm in the state’s wide western reaches, where the days were long and the lessons simple: work hard, look after your own, and don’t make a fuss. Those early years left their mark.
She later studied Arts at the University of Queensland, before doing what felt natural at the time, heading back home to the family property. But the world was calling. Anne packed a backpack and went looking, spending years on the road and finding herself most alive in South America. She wrote everything down along the way. Those notebooks, full of dust, colour, and curiosity, eventually became her blog, a quiet, personal record of seeing the world and learning from it.
