Life Power List 2024: Ho Ren Yung steers global brand evolution of Banyan Group

SINGAPORE – Ms Ho Ren Yung, deputy chief executive of Banyan Group, oversaw the company’s brand relaunch in a bumper year of 18 openings in 2024. These included Banyan Tree Higashiyama Kyoto in Japan and Angsana Tengchong in China.

Together with her team, the 39-year-old has steered the group’s brand evolution and raised its global profile significantly with its 12 hospitality brands such as Banyan Tree, Angsana, Cassia and Garrya. She is now preparing to open its 100th hotel by 2025.

To mark Banyan Group’s 30th anniversary in 2024, she announced the establishment of a Rewilding Banyan Fund on Nov 1, where US$1 (S$1.35) would be pledged for every direct booking made on Banyan Group’s websites. The new fund will support long-term rewilding efforts to restore natural habitats in the destinations where the company operates.

This builds on the success of the rewilding initiative piloted at the group’s Laguna Phuket property in 2023, where 7,500 saplings from 84 native species were planted to create high-density, self-sustaining biodiverse pocket forests.

For these reasons, Ms Ho is The Straits Times’ hospitality power player of the year.

Yet, curiously, brand-building is not what excites her.

Instead, she is focusing her energies on “belief-building”.

“I think brand-building today, especially with digital media, can be a commodified space where many companies compete daily for attention,” says the daughter of Mr Ho Kwon Ping, the 72-year-old hotelier and founder of Banyan Group. Her mother Claire Chiang, 73, is the hospitality group’s co-founder and a former Nominated MP.

Ms Ho has two brothers. Mr Ho Ren Hua, 42, is chief executive of sister company Thai Wah Public Co and a board director of Banyan Group, while Mr Ho Ren Chun, 30, is Banyan Group’s director of corporate development.

Ms Ho notes that in this “attention economy”, brand-building can turn out to be a rat race that, at the end of the day, is not meaningful and does not add value to the lives of Banyan’s guests.

“In the end, a brand is what people believe about you – and that is made up of a complex network of things,” says the graduate of London School of Economics.

She is married to entrepreneur Adrien Desbaillets, 42, and they have three sons aged five, three and 11 months.

“The Banyan experience has always been about more than hospitality. It’s about creating meaningful experiences that resonate deeply with both people and place in all the pioneering destinations we find ourselves in, whether in the Bai Tu Long Bay in Vietnam with Angsana Quan Lan, or our first Banyan Tree in Kyoto’s historic Higashiyama ward in Japan.”

Formerly known as Banyan Tree Group, the company underwent a rebranding exercise in January to mark three decades in business, as well as to signal its evolution to a multi-branded hospitality company.

It currently operates in more than 20 countries, employing about 12,000 associates from more than 90 countries.

It is set to open its 100th resort for its homecoming debut in Singapore in April 2025. The group will play a management role in the new Mandai Rainforest Resort, owned by Mandai Wildlife Group. It is slated to open with 24 treehouses shaped like seed pods and 314 hotel rooms.

Ms Ho says the next chapter of Banyan Group’s story is centred on deepening two themes that have always been foundational.

The first belief is that place and provenance matter. The second is that the right role of business is as a platform for progress, and not just focused on commercial growth.

“For place and provenance, this is a red thread from when I started Matter a decade ago, with a focus on where and why something is made. It’s an antidote to the commodification of everyday life which we face today as a consumer society, and the expectations of endless growth.”

Ms Ho founded Singapore clothing brand Matter in 2014, a socially conscious label she put on hold since late 2020, after the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The label became a prominent player in the local fashion community, championing ethical sourcing and featuring more than 17 artisan communities across Asia involved in heritage crafts such as block-printing, ikat and batik.

“Every time we plant a new flag, we deepen our practice of place-making and building a like-minded community through ‘relational design’,” she highlights. Relational design refers to how the group creates a sense of place through site context and mapping, material culture, supply chain and architectural design.

The group’s first upcoming safari property within the largely raw and untouched wilderness of Ruaha National Park in Tanzania, to be launched in the second half of 2025, will be a prime example of this.

“The idea of relational design can be seen from how the architecture draws inspiration from the flowing shape of the Great Ruaha River in Tanzania, to the details in its interior, handcrafted by local artisans, and the discovery experience that brings deep connection and immersion in the local culture and wild, almost serendipitous encounters of our guests,” she says.

Banyan has several programmes hinged on the cultural value of a site, creating immersive experiences and promoting well-being.

One of these is a women’s retreat focused on nature and self-growth that was held in Buahan, Bali, in March. Another six retreats have been rolled out, with more planned for 2025.

Each retreat invites guests to connect with themselves mentally, physically and emotionally through experiences such as meditation, breathwork and somatic movement therapy.

“Retreats are something we are looking to continue driving to more locations and with even more varied formats in the coming year, for families and couples,” Ms Ho says.

The second belief – that the right role of business is as a platform for progress, not just growth – is inspired by her mother’s approach to the business.

“As a business family, much of our energy is geared towards long-term value creation and resilience. My mother has often said that Banyan should focus on being a 500-year-old company instead of simply a Fortune 500 company,” Ms Ho says.

Banyan Group is interested in progress, not just growth, she asserts, and is using business as a vehicle to promote communitarian capitalism, not just consumer capitalism.

“We are facing a polycrisis in this generation,” she reflects.

“This new era requires systems change, and we must rethink how we define success. That means moving beyond traditional financial metrics to embrace a polycapital approach to value creation – which means encompassing social, natural, physical, cultural and human capital alongside economic outcomes.”

She adds: “Banyan Group’s legacy is a strong foundation, but my role is to ensure we become an evolved enterprise for the future while staying true to our founding values.”

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, it was reported that there were 19 openings by Banyan Group instead of 18. This has been updated.