The most important meeting at a luxury London hotel this week was chaired by an 11-year-old. Leilahni Omoye, from Stoke Newington, swapped the classroom for the boardroom when she took charge of Nobu Hotel London Portman Square — name badge on, “HR contract” signed — to live out her dream of running a hotel for the day.
Leilahni and her sister Akaila were handed the run of the five-star hotel as manager and assistant manager. They sat in on management meetings, toured the departments that keep a luxury operation humming, and threw themselves into the details: preparing a welcome card and a sweet treat for a VIP guest, then tasting afternoon tea creations in the kitchen and offering their verdict on what visitors would enjoy most.
Later came final checks on the guest’s room and a seat at the operations meeting, before the day ended in style — dinner at Fallow, a restaurant nearby, and an overnight stay back at the hotel. For one day, the 11-year-old was not a patient or a bystander. She was the boss.
The dream day was organised by the charity Make-A-Wish UK, and came just months after Leilahni received a life-saving heart transplant in November 2025 — the culmination of a medical journey that began before she was even born. It is the kind of cause Londoners love to rally behind: thousands recently took on a trio of London Ultras to raise more than £2 million for charity.
Before birth, Leilahni was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a rare condition in which the left side of the heart fails to develop properly — leaving a child, in effect, with a single working ventricle doing the job of two. Babies born with the condition usually face a series of complex open-heart operations in their earliest years, re-plumbing the circulation so the one ventricle can sustain the body. Leilahni had her first surgery at just seven days old, followed by three more — but by the age of four, her heart was failing.
Her mother, Laura, recalled being told her daughter’s chances of survival were slim. “It was a shock. We were told her chances of survival were slim and that she wasn’t likely to make it,” she said. “As a toddler, she was always out of breath. There was nothing else they could do operation-wise. They said we had to put her on a ventilator and essentially let her go into a vegetative state.”
Against the odds, Leilahni rallied. She was placed on the heart transplant waiting list in 2019 and, after years of waiting, the call finally came in November 2025.
It was during her long recovery that the idea for the wish took shape. Laura said her daughter has always loved role-playing with her sister: “They have a hotel game they play at the moment, where they put posters up and take luggage and food trays out — so she came up with the idea of being the manager of a posh London hotel for the day. After everything she’s gone through, this is the cherry on the cake.”
Make-A-Wish UK exists to grant life-changing wishes for children living with critical illnesses — moments designed to let a child be defined by something other than their diagnosis. “Critical illness can interrupt childhood in so many ways,” said the charity’s chief executive, Jason Suckley. “Every wish starts by listening to what matters most to each child and bringing that to life. For Leilahni, becoming a hotel manager for the day celebrated who she is beyond her illness — and the future she dreams of.”
The sisters’ big day was supported by the retailer Peacocks, which provided new outfits for them to wear. Their hotel, meanwhile, sits at the heart of an industry rarely far from the headlines — the Mayor has backed a proposed overnight visitor levy on London hotel stays.
For Leilahni, though, the day was about something simpler: proof that the little girl who once played hotels on her bedroom floor can run the real thing. It is the latest uplifting chapter for the capital’s young people, after a Dagenham primary school won UNICEF UK’s top award for children’s rights — and a reminder that, after everything she has endured, this 11-year-old hotelier is only just getting started.
