His hospitality empire is worth over $200 million

Growing up, Ho Kwon Ping didn’t think he’d become a businessman, let alone a hotel tycoon.

“I had not always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” he told CNBC Make It. “It’s just that the few times where I started working for other people, it didn’t really work … I’m quite individualistic. I became an entrepreneur more by the lack of other avenues.” 

Today, the 72-year-old is the founder and executive chairman of Banyan Group, a hospitality company with a portfolio of 12 global brands, more than 80 hotels and resorts, along with spas, galleries and residences spread across more than 20 countries.

The company, which is listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange, brought in about $328 million Singapore dollars (about $242 million) in revenue in 2023. Banyan Group has a market capitalization of SG$300 million, according to LSEG data.

Ho shared something about himself that some may find surprising: He was jailed 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 American inventor and physicist William Shockley, which ultimately got him suspended from the institution.

“I was thrown out because of my attending with the Black Students Union, a protest they had against a guy called William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for creating semiconductors, but who also had a strange view about eugenics. He wrote several books saying that Blacks should be sterilized,” said Ho.

As a result, Ho was tried in a campus judicial panel and found guilty of suppressing academic freedom, thus leading to his suspension from the university. Subsequently, he decided to leave Stanford and returned to Singapore, where he completed his national service and restarted his university studies.

“I had to start from zero 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, I got jailed under the Internal Security Act for being pro-Communist.”

That was in 1977, and he was put into solitary confinement during his two-month prison sentence — a time he describes as being “scary, lonely, depressing and reflective.”

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 there 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 had three very idyllic years there.”

Ho was born in Hong Kong and spent most of his childhood and adolescence growing up in Thailand before moving to Singapore. His father, Ho Rih Hwa, was a businessman who co-founded the Thai Wah Public Company and headed the Wah Chang Group, conglomerates with operations across Asia.

“Although my parents were pretty well off, I’ve always been a bit rebellious and wanted to be independent and so on,” he said.

In 1981, Ho’s father had a stroke. As the eldest son, Ho assumed the responsibility of taking over the family business.

“That business was a real microcosm of overseas Chinese businesses, meaning a jack of all trades but master of none,” said Ho. “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 in running the family business, Ho had an epiphany — rather than running a “hodgepodge of businesses,” 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 could only do so by owning a brand or owning a technology, and I’m not a technologist, so I decided we had to own a brand,” he said.

The stars aligned when one day in 1984, Ho stumbled upon a vast piece of coastal land in Bang Tao Bay in Phuket, Thailand. He decided to purchase 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 alongside his wife and his brother — who is an architect — to design and develop several hotels and resorts on the property. Laguna Phuket, Asia’s first destination integrated resort, was opened in 1987, according to the statement.

“We designed the first hotel, and we managed to get a Thai company to manage it. A second hotel — Sheraton managed it, and third and fourth and so on,” said Ho. “And then the last piece of land had no beach [so] nobody wanted to manage it.”

“That was when the lightbulb went off, and I said: Well, since nobody wants to manage it … why don’t we start our own brand?”

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

“This was 30 years ago, so the notion of an ‘all-pool villa’ hotel didn’t exist … we’ve 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 drop 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-branded portfolio, according to a company statement.

“People have asked me whether I sold out or not, and I would say: ‘No, I’ve grown up. The kinds of things I was doing, you can’t keep doing forever. You’ll go to jail permanently, and also you’re not effective,'” said Ho. “But what we wanted to do in terms of social change, I think we’re actually doing through Banyan Tree.”

Want to make extra money outside of your day job? Sign up for CNBC’s online course How to Earn Passive Income Online to learn about common passive income streams, tips to get started and real-life success stories.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter  to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.