His hospitality empire is worth more than 200 million dollars
Ho Kwon Ping is the founder and executive chairman of the Banyan Group.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
When Ho Kwon Ping grew up, he never thought he would become a businessman, let alone a hotelier.
“I didn’t always want to be an entrepreneur,” he told CNBC’s Make It. “The few times I started working for other people, I didn’t really work … I’m very individualistic. I became more entrepreneurial because of the lack of other avenues.”
Today, he is the 72-year-old founder and executive chairman Banyan group12 international brands, more than 80 hotels and resorts, spas, galleries and a hospitality company spanning more than 20 countries.
Sunset view from Mandi Rainforest Resort by banyan tree.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
The company, which is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, posted revenue of about 328 million Singapore dollars (about $242 million) in 2018. 2023. Banyan Group has a market capitalization of SG$300 million according to LSEG data.
Years of creation
Ho shared some surprising facts about himself: He was arrested in his youth.
He said that his childhood was largely defined by his strong zeal for social activism.
In the year While working toward his undergraduate degree at Stanford University in the early 1970s, he was a student activist against the Vietnam War (also called the “American War” in Vietnam).
He joined other protests on campus – especially against the American inventor and physicist William ShockleyIt eventually got him suspended from the institution.
“I was expelled for being with the Black Student Union, which protested against William Shockley, a Nobel laureate for the invention of semiconductors, but who had a strange view of eugenics. He wrote several books. He said blacks should be sterilized.
As a result, Ho was tried by a campus judicial panel and found guilty of suppressing academic freedom, leading to his Suspension from the university. He then decided to leave Stanford and return to Singapore to complete his national service and resume his university studies.
“I had to start from scratch and it was very boring, so I started writing as a freelance journalist (for) the now-defunct magazine Far East Economic Review,” he said. “I started writing about Singaporean politics, which the government didn’t like. So, I was arrested under the Homeland Security Act for being a communist supporter.”
That was in 1977, and he spent two months in solitary confinement – which he described as “terrifying, lonely, depressing and reflective”.
Ho Kwon Ping and his wife Claire Chiang in 1992.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
After his release, Ho joined the magazine as a journalist and moved to Hong Kong with his wife, Claire Chiang. The newlyweds moved to a small fishing village on Lama Island called Yung Shu Wan, which translates to “Banyan Tree Bay”.
“I couldn’t afford to live in Hong Kong Island or Kowloon because my salary wasn’t very good…so we had no choice but to live in Llama Island,” Ho said. “Although we weren’t rich … we had three very happy years there.”
Ho was born in Hong Kong and spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Thailand before moving to Singapore. His father, For goutHe was a businessman who founded Tai Wah Public Company and headed the Wah Chang Group with operations across Asia.
“Even though my parents were great, I was always a bit of a rebel and wanted to be independent and stuff like that,” he said.
A sudden businessman
In 1981, Ho’s father suffered a stroke. As the eldest son, Ho assumed the responsibility of overseeing the family business.
“That business was a true microcosm of overseas Chinese businesses, meaning a jack of all trades but master of none,” Ho said. “We had 10 to 12 different businesses, from construction to contract television manufacturing … 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 businesses”, he wanted to focus on building his own brand.
“At that point, I decided that contract manufacturing was not a long-term solution. You have to own the customers, and you can only do that by owning the brand or the technology, and I’m not a technology expert, so I decided that we should own the brand,” he said.
When the light bulb goes off
In the year One day in 1984, the stars aligned when Ho landed on a wide beach in Bang Tao Bay in Phuket, Thailand. He decided to buy a stretch of more than 550 hectares, which turned out to be an abandoned tin mine, according to an official company statement.
After years of renovations, Ho worked with his wife and brother – an architect – to design and develop several hotels and resorts on the property. Laguna Phuket, Asia’s first destination integrated resort, opened in 1987, according to the statement.
“We managed to design the first hotel and get a Thai company to manage it. The second hotel was managed by Sheraton, and the third and fourth and so on,” Ho said. “And the last piece of land didn’t have a beach, so no one wanted to manage it.”
“That’s when the light bulb went off, and I said, ‘Well, since nobody wants to manage it… why don’t we start our own brand?’
Aerial view of a banyan tree in Phuket, Thailand.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
To make up for the lack of a beach, Ho decided to build private villas with pools for each.
“This was 30 years ago, so there was no idea of an ‘all-pool villa’ hotel … We also pioneered the ‘tropical spa’.
In the year In 1994, the group’s flagship luxury resort, “Banyan Tree Phuket” opened its doors, including the first Banyan Tree Spa – a name that Ho shared with his wife during his happy years at Hong Kong’s Banyan Tree Bay.
“Innovation does not fall from the sky … it was a response to demand,” he said.
In the year In 2006, Banyan Tree Holdings Limited was listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange and in 2024 it was launched as an umbrella brand for the Banyan Group’s multi-brand portfolio, according to a company statement.
“People ask me if I sold or not, and I say: “No, I’m grown up. The kind of things I was doing, you can’t do it forever, you’ll end up in jail forever. And you’re ineffective,” Ho said. “But I think we’re doing what we want to do in terms of social change through the banyan tree.
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