Ho Kwon Ping is the co-founder and executive chairman of the Banyan Group.
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Growing up, Ho Kwon Ping never thought he would become a businessman, let alone a hotel tycoon.
“I didn’t always want to be an entrepreneur,” he said CNBC Make It. “Only a few times when I started working for other people, it didn’t really work out… I’m quite an individualist. I became an entrepreneur more because of the lack of other avenues.”
Today, the 72-year-old is the founder and executive president the Banyan grouphospitality company with a portfolio of 12 global brands, more than 80 hotels and resorts, along with spas, galleries and residences in more than 20 countries.
Sunset view from Mandai Rainforest Resort by Banyan Tree.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
The company, which is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, generated about S$328 million (about US$242 million) in revenue in in 2023. Banyan Group has a market capitalization of SG$300 million, according to LSEG data.
Formative years
Ho shared something about himself that might surprise some: he was in prison in his youth.
He said his early life was largely defined by a strong passion for social activism.
While an undergraduate at Stanford University in the early 1970s, he was an outspoken student activist against the Vietnam War (also called “America’s War” in Vietnam).
He also joined other protests on campus – notably the one against the American inventor and physicist William Shockleyfor which he was ultimately suspended from the institution.
“I got kicked out because of my attendance at the Black Student Union, a protest they had against a guy named William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for creating semiconductors, but who also had a weird view on eugenics. He wrote several books saying that black people should be sterilized.” , Ho said.
As a result, Ho was tried before a campus judicial panel and found guilty of suppressing academic freedom, leading to suspension from the university. After that, he decided to leave Stanford and returned to Singapore, where he completed his national service and resumed his studies.
“I had to start from scratch and it was really boring, so I started writing as a freelance journalist [for] a now-defunct journal called the Far Eastern Economic Review,” he said. “I started writing about Singaporean politics, which the government didn’t like. So I got jailed under the Internal Security Act for being pro-communist.”
It was 1977 and he was put in solitary confinement during a two-month prison sentence – a time he describes as “terrible, lonely, depressed and brooding”.
Ho Kwon Ping and his wife, Claire Chiang, in 1992.
Courtesy of Banyan Group.
After his release, Ho rejoined the magazine as a reporter and moved to Hong Kong with his wife Claire Chiang. The newlyweds moved to a small fishing village on the island of Lamma there called Yung Shue Wan, which translates to “Banyan Tree Bay”.
“I wasn’t paid 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 weren’t rich…we had three very idyllic years there.”
Ho was born in Hong Kong and spent most of his childhood and youth growing up in Thailand before moving to Singapore. his father, Ho Rih Hwawas a businessman who co-founded Thai Wah Public Company and led the Wah Chang Group, conglomerates with operations across Asia.
“Even though my parents were pretty well off, I was always a bit rebellious and wanted to be independent and so on,” he said.
Accidental businessman
In 1981, Ho’s father had a stroke. As the eldest son, Ho took on the responsibility of taking over the family business.
“That business was a real microcosm of overseas Chinese business, which means jack of all trades but master of none,” Ho said. “We had about 10 to 12 different jobs from construction to contract manufacturing of televisions … even Adidas shoes, and so on.”
After several major failures and lessons in running the family business, Ho had an epiphany – instead of running a “mixed business”, he wanted to focus on building his own brand.
“That’s when I decided that contract manufacturing was not a long-term solution. You have to own the customer, and you can only do that by owning the brand or the technology, and I’m not a technologist, so I decided we have to own the brand,” he said.
When the ‘light bulb went out’
The stars aligned when one day in 1984, Ho stumbled upon a huge piece of shoreline in Bang Tao Bay in Phuket, Thailand. It decided to buy a section of over 550 hectares, which turned out to be an abandoned tin mine, according to an official statement from the company.
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 destination, opened in 1987, according to a statement.
“We designed the first hotel and managed to get a Thai company to manage it. The second hotel — it was managed by Sheraton, the third and fourth and so on,” Ho said. “And then the last piece of land didn’t have a beach [so] nobody wanted to manage it.”
“That’s when the light bulb went off and I said, Well, since no one wants to manage it … why don’t we start our own brand?”
Aerial view of 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 a pool for each.
“That was 30 years ago, so the concept 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 blissful 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 a multi-brand portfolio, according to a company statement.
“People would ask me if I sold out or not, and I’d say, ‘No, I’ve grown up. You can’t keep doing the things I’ve been doing forever. You’re going to go to jail forever, and you’re also not effective,'” Ho said. “But what we wanted to do in terms of social change, I think we’re actually doing through Banyan Tree.”
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