CATEGORY
Chief Financial Officer
RECIPIENT
Wayne Williams, Minor Hotels
By SWASTI SHARMA
W
ayne Williams’ entry into hospitality was not of design, but of circumstance. Coming from modest means, full-time university was not an option. Instead, straight out of high school, he took the first job offered to him: a mail clerk at an accounting firm on Queensland’ s Gold Coast. As it happened, the firm’ s client list included Sea World and a handful of resorts. That early exposure was enough to hook him on an industry that, at the time, wasn’ t widely regarded as a serious career path in Australia.
He went on to complete his commerce degree and CPA by correspondence over the following 13 years, working through a series of resort projects that stretched well beyond the hotel itself into construction, retail and residential development before moving into property-level finance roles in Australia, Vanuatu and Thailand.
“ I never started my career looking for accolades at all, but I was a little bit nose to the grindstone and really just got on and made a contribution to wherever I’ ve worked,” he said. It’ s a fitting summary of someone who has spent nearly 20 years with Minor Hotels— the Bangkok-based hotel company with more than 560 hotels worldwide across 12 brands— rising from group financial controller to CFO, without ever seeming particularly interested in the climb itself.
58 hotelsmag. com September 2026