His hospitality empire is price greater than $200 million

When Ho Kwon Ping was growing up, he didn't imagine he would turn into a businessman, let alone a hotel tycoon.

“I didn't always want to be an entrepreneur,” he told CNBC about making 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 more of an entrepreneur through the lack of other avenues.”

Today the 72-year-old is the founder and executive chairman of von Banyan groupa hospitality company with a portfolio of 12 global brands, greater than 80 hotels and resorts, in addition to spas, galleries and residences in greater than 20 countries.

The company, which is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, raised roughly US$328 million in Singapore (roughly US$242 million 2023. Banyan Group has a market capitalization of SG$300 million, based on LSEG data.

Ho shared something about himself that some may find surprising: He was incarcerated in his youth.

He said his youth was largely defined by a robust zeal for social activism.

While working toward his bachelor's degree at Stanford University within the early Seventies, he was an outspoken student activist against the Vietnam War (also known as the “American War” in Vietnam).

He joined other protests on campus – particularly against the American inventor and physicist William Shockleywhich ultimately got him suspended from the institution.

“I was kicked out for my participation in the Black Students Union, a protest against a man named William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for the creation of semiconductors but who also had a strange view of eugenics. He wrote several books with the words saying that black people should be sterilized,” Ho said.

As a result, HO was tried in a campus judicial panel and located guilty of suppressing academic freedom, which resulted in him suspension from the university. He then decided to depart Stanford and returned to Singapore, where he accomplished his national service and restarted 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 the Far Eastern Economic Review,” he said.” I started writing about Singapore policies that the government didn't like. So I was imprisoned under the internal security law because I was pro-communist. “

That was 1977, and he was placed in solitary confinement during his two-month sentence – a period he describes as “frightening, lonely, depressing and reflective.”

After his release, Ho rejoined the magazine as a journalist and moved to Hong Kong along with his wife Claire Chiang. There, 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 the island or Kowloon in Hong Kong… so we had no choice but to live on Lamma Island,” Ho said. “Although we didn't We were rich…we had 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, Ho rih hwawas a businessman who co-founded the Thai Economic Corporation and headed the Wah Chang Group, conglomerated with operations throughout Asia.

“Even though my parents were pretty good, I was always a little bit rebellious and wanted to be independent and stuff like that,” he said.

In 1981, Ho's father had a stroke. As the eldest son, Ho took on the responsibility of taking up the family business.

“This business was a real microcosm for overseas Chinese companies, meaning a jack of all businesses but master of none,” Ho said. “We had about 10 to 12 different businesses, from construction to contract manufacturing of televisions…even Adidas shoes and so on.”

After several major failures and lessons learned in running the family business, Ho had an epiphany – as a substitute of running a “hodgepodge of companies,” he desired to deal with constructing his own brand.

“I then decided 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 owning a technology, and I'm not a technologist, so I decided we should “Had to own a brand,” he said.

The stars aligned when one day in 1984 he stumbled upon a huge piece of coastal land in Bang Tao Bay in Phuket, Thailand. He decided to buy the stretch of over 550 acres, which turned out to be an abandoned tin mine, according to an official company statement.

After years of restoration, Ho worked with 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, was opened in 1987 after the Declaration.

“We designed the primary hotel and managed a Thai company. A second hotel – Sheraton managed it and the third and fourth and so forth,” Ho said. “And then the last piece of land didn't have a beach [so] Nobody desired to make it. “

“Then the lightbulb went off and I said, well since nobody wants to administer it…why don't we start our own brand?”

To make up for the lack of a beach, Ho decided to build private villas for each with a pool.

“That was 30 years ago, so the concept of ​​an 'all-pool villa' hotel didn't exist… We also initiated the 'tropical spa',” he said.

In 1994, the group's flagship “Banyan Tree Phuket” opened its doors, including the first Banyan Tree Spa – a name inspired by the blissful years spent with his wife in Hong Kong's Banyan Tree Bay.

“Innovation doesn't just fall from the sky…it was a response to a necessity,” 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 would ask me if I sold out or not, and I’d say, 'No, I grew up. The sorts of things I did, you’ll be able to't go on ceaselessly. You're going to go to prison permanently. And “You too are not effective,” Ho said. “But what we wanted to do in terms of social change, I think we're actually doing through Banyan Tree.”