Ho Ren Yung: Steering global brand evolution of Banyan Group

Ms Ho Ren Yung, deputy chief executive of Banyan Group, oversaw the company's brand relaunch in a bumper year of 19 openings in 2024. These included Banyan Tree Higashiyama Kyoto in Japan and Angsana Tengchong in China.

- Chantal Sajan

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 Sunday 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.