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Ho Kwon Ping is co-founder and CEO of Banyan Group.
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Growing up, Ho Kwon Ping didn’t think he would become a businessman, let alone a hotel magnate.
“I didn’t always want to be an entrepreneur,” he said. CNBC does it. “It’s just that the few times I started working for other people, it didn’t really work out… I’m quite individualistic. I became an entrepreneur more because of the lack of other avenues.”
Today, the 72-year-old is the founder and CEO of Baniano Groupa hospitality company with a portfolio of 12 global brands, more than 80 hotels and resorts, as well as spas, galleries and residences spread across more than 20 countries.
A sunset view from the Banyan Tree Mandai Rainforest Resort.
Courtesy of Grupo Banyan.
The company, listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, had revenue of about S$328 million (about $242 million) in 2023. Banyan Group has a market capitalization of S$300 million, according to LSEG data.
The formative years
Ho shared something about himself that some may find surprising: He was imprisoned in his youth.
He said his early life was largely defined by a strong zeal for social activism.
While working toward his undergraduate degree at Stanford University in the early 1970s, he was an outspoken student activist against the Vietnam War (also called the “American War” in Vietnam).
He joined other protests on campus, notably one against the American inventor and physicist. William Shockleywhich finally earned him his suspension from the institution.
“I got kicked out for attending the Black Student Union, a protest they were having against a guy named William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for creating semiconductors, but who also had a strange view on eugenics. He wrote several books saying that black people should be sterilized,” Ho said.
As a result, Ho was tried at a campus judicial panel and found guilty of suppressing academic freedom, leading to his suspension from the university. He subsequently decided to leave Stanford and return to Singapore, where he completed his national service and resumed his university studies.
“I had to start from scratch and it was really boring, so I started writing as a freelance journalist (for) a now-defunct magazine called Far Eastern Economic Review,” he said. “I started writing about Singapore politics, which the government didn’t like. So they imprisoned me under the Internal Security Act for being pro-communist.”
That was in 1977, and he was placed in solitary confinement during his two-month prison sentence, a period he describes as “scary, lonely, depressing and reflective.”
Ho Kwon Ping and his wife, Claire Chiang, in 1992.
Courtesy of Grupo Banyan.
After his release, Ho rejoined the magazine as a journalist and moved to Hong Kong with his wife, Claire Chiang. The newlyweds moved to a small fishing village on Lamma Island called Yung Shue Wan, which translates to “Banyan Tree Bay.”
“I wasn’t paid very well, so I couldn’t afford to live on Hong Kong Island or Kowloon… so we had no choice but to live on Lamma Island,” Ho said. “Although we were not rich… we spent three very idyllic years there.”
Ho was born in Hong Kong and spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Thailand before moving to Singapore. His father, To Rih Hwawas an entrepreneur who co-founded the Thai Wah Public Company and headed the Wah Chang Group, conglomerates with operations throughout Asia.
“Even though my parents were pretty well off, I’ve always been a bit of a rebel and wanted to be independent and stuff,” she said.
An accidental businessman
In 1981, Ho’s father suffered a stroke. As the eldest son, Ho took on the responsibility of taking over the family business.
“That business was a true microcosm of overseas Chinese companies, that is, a jack of all trades but master of none,” Ho said. “We had 10 to 12 different businesses, from construction to contract manufacturing of televisions… even Adidas shoes, etc.”
After several major failures and lessons in running the family business, Ho had an epiphany: Instead of running a “hodgepodge of companies,” he wanted to focus on building his own brand.
“I decided then that contract manufacturing is not a long-term solution. You have to own the customer, and you can only do that by owning a brand or a technology, and I’m not a technologist, so I decided we had to have a brand,” he said.
When the light bulb went off
The stars aligned when one day in 1984, Ho stumbled upon a vast stretch of coastal land in Bang Tao Bay in Phuket, Thailand. It decided to purchase the more than 550-acre tract, which turned out to be an abandoned tin mine, according to an official company statement.
After years of restoration, Ho worked alongside his wife and brother, who is an architect, to design and develop several hotels and resorts on the property. Laguna Phuket, Asia’s first integrated resort, opened in 1987, according to the statement.
“We designed the first hotel and got a Thai company to manage it. A second hotel – Sheraton managed it, and the third, the fourth, and so on,” Ho said. “And then the last piece of land didn’t have a beach (so) no one wanted to manage it.”
“That’s when the lightbulb went on, and I said: Well, since no one wants to manage it… why don’t we start our own brand?”
An aerial view of Banyan Tree in Phuket, Thailand.
Courtesy of Grupo Banyan.
To compensate for the lack of a beach, Ho decided to build private villas with a pool for each one.
“This was 30 years ago, so the notion of a ‘pool villa’ hotel didn’t exist…we also pioneered the ‘tropical spa,'” he said.
In 1994, the group’s flagship luxury resort, “Banyan Tree Phuket”, opened its doors, including the first Banyan Tree Spa, a name inspired by the wonderful years Ho spent with his wife in Hong Kong’s Banyan Tree Bay.
“Innovation doesn’t fall from the sky… it was a response to a need,” he said.
In 2006, Banyan Tree Holdings Limited debuted on the Singapore Stock Exchange and in 2024, Banyan Group was launched as an umbrella brand for the multi-brand portfolio, according to a company statement.
“People have asked me if I sold out or not, and I said, ‘No, I’ve grown up. The kind of things I was doing, you can’t keep doing them forever. You’ll go to jail permanently. And you’re not effective.'” Ho said. “But what we wanted to do in terms of social change, I think we’re actually doing it through Banyan Tree.”
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