Latest news with #KwonPingHo
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The founder of a luxury hotel chain says today's tourists look nothing like they did 30 years ago
Banyan Group founder Kwon Ping Ho has spent over 30 years in the hospitality industry. Ho's luxury hotel chain launched its first resort in 1994 and now operates over 90 hotels globally. Ho told BI that tourists today have vastly different expectations from their parents' generation. Kwon Ping Ho has come a long way since he opened his first resort in Phuket in 1994. Ho's luxury hotel chain, Banyan Group, now operates over 90 hotels worldwide, including in countries like Cuba and Saudi Arabia. The 72-year-old told Business Insider that it's not just his company that's changed. His customers look much different than they did three decades ago, and they want different things out of travel. "When you talk about the people of my generation, when international travel just started, people were happy to go on group tours. They just go to a hotel and they eat in a hotel," Ho said on the sidelines of the International Conference on Cohesive Societies held in Singapore last month. "But young people today have long become jaded about international travel. They've been traveling with their parents," he added. "Today, when they're traveling on their own, they are looking much more for things that are out of the way." Ho said today's more seasoned travelers are a vastly different breed from yesterday's checklist sightseers. "They are much more into experiences, and not just to see something beautiful because they've probably seen that, done that with their parents already. They are looking at experiences which are deeper and allow them to interact with the local community," he continued. Ho isn't the only one who has noticed the generational shift taking place. Last year, McKinsey surveyed 5,000 travelers from China, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the US. The consultancy said that 52% of Gen Zers surveyed said they are willing to splurge on travel experiences compared to 29% of baby boomers surveyed. "One-size-fits-all tourism offerings of the past have grown outdated" as travelers seek "creative experiences that are tailored to their priorities and personal narratives," McKinsey wrote. Another change Ho said he noticed was in the countries from which tourists tended to hail and the places that they chose to visit. "When I first started in hospitality 30 years ago, the nature of tourism was one direction and one color," Ho said. "It was basically white people from Europe, traveling in one direction, from west to east." "Over the years, what I call 'rainbow tourism' has come up because of increasing wealth in other developing countries," he added. Ho said this has led to a "multicolored, multifaceted, exciting tourism of people from all over the world traveling to all over the world." "You've got Indians, you've got Africans, you've got Arabs, you've got Chinese, and Japanese, and so on, and then of course you've got young people from within the region," he continued. "That to me has been the biggest change." In January, UN Tourism's World Tourism Barometer said an estimated 1.4 billion tourists traveled internationally in 2024, an 11% increase over 2023. UN Tourism said it expected international tourism arrival numbers to grow by 3% to 5% in 2025. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The founder of a luxury hotel chain says today's tourists look nothing like they did 30 years ago
Banyan Group founder Kwon Ping Ho has spent over 30 years in the hospitality industry. Ho's luxury hotel chain launched its first resort in 1994 and now operates over 90 hotels globally. Ho told BI that tourists today have vastly different expectations from their parents' generation. Kwon Ping Ho has come a long way since he opened his first resort in Phuket in 1994. Ho's luxury hotel chain, Banyan Group, now operates over 90 hotels worldwide, including in countries like Cuba and Saudi Arabia. The 72-year-old told Business Insider that it's not just his company that's changed. His customers look much different than they did three decades ago, and they want different things out of travel. "When you talk about the people of my generation, when international travel just started, people were happy to go on group tours. They just go to a hotel and they eat in a hotel," Ho said on the sidelines of the International Conference on Cohesive Societies held in Singapore last month. "But young people today have long become jaded about international travel. They've been traveling with their parents," he added. "Today, when they're traveling on their own, they are looking much more for things that are out of the way." Ho said today's more seasoned travelers are a vastly different breed from yesterday's checklist sightseers. "They are much more into experiences, and not just to see something beautiful because they've probably seen that, done that with their parents already. They are looking at experiences which are deeper and allow them to interact with the local community," he continued. Ho isn't the only one who has noticed the generational shift taking place. Last year, McKinsey surveyed 5,000 travelers from China, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the US. The consultancy said that 52% of Gen Zers surveyed said they are willing to splurge on travel experiences compared to 29% of baby boomers surveyed. "One-size-fits-all tourism offerings of the past have grown outdated" as travelers seek "creative experiences that are tailored to their priorities and personal narratives," McKinsey wrote. Another change Ho said he noticed was in the countries from which tourists tended to hail and the places that they chose to visit. "When I first started in hospitality 30 years ago, the nature of tourism was one direction and one color," Ho said. "It was basically white people from Europe, traveling in one direction, from west to east." "Over the years, what I call 'rainbow tourism' has come up because of increasing wealth in other developing countries," he added. Ho said this has led to a "multicolored, multifaceted, exciting tourism of people from all over the world traveling to all over the world." "You've got Indians, you've got Africans, you've got Arabs, you've got Chinese, and Japanese, and so on, and then of course you've got young people from within the region," he continued. "That to me has been the biggest change." In January, UN Tourism's World Tourism Barometer said an estimated 1.4 billion tourists traveled internationally in 2024, an 11% increase over 2023. UN Tourism said it expected international tourism arrival numbers to grow by 3% to 5% in 2025. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
12 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
The founder of a luxury hotel chain says today's tourists look nothing like they did 30 years ago
Kwon Ping Ho has come a long way since he opened his first resort in Phuket in 1994. Ho's luxury hotel chain, Banyan Group, now operates over 90 hotels worldwide, including in countries like Cuba and Saudi Arabia. The 72-year-old told Business Insider that it's not just his company that's changed. His customers look much different than they did three decades ago, and they want different things out of travel. "When you talk about the people of my generation, when international travel just started, people were happy to go on group tours. They just go to a hotel and they eat in a hotel," Ho said on the sidelines of the International Conference on Cohesive Societies held in Singapore last month. "But young people today have long become jaded about international travel. They've been traveling with their parents," he added. "Today, when they're traveling on their own, they are looking much more for things that are out of the way." Ho said today's more seasoned travelers are a vastly different breed from yesterday's checklist sightseers. "They are much more into experiences, and not just to see something beautiful because they've probably seen that, done that with their parents already. They are looking at experiences which are deeper and allow them to interact with the local community," he continued. Ho isn't the only one who has noticed the generational shift taking place. Last year, McKinsey surveyed 5,000 travelers from China, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the US. The consultancy said that 52% of Gen Zers surveyed said they are willing to splurge on travel experiences compared to 29% of baby boomers surveyed. "One-size-fits-all tourism offerings of the past have grown outdated" as travelers seek "creative experiences that are tailored to their priorities and personal narratives," McKinsey wrote. Another change Ho said he noticed was in the countries from which tourists tended to hail and the places that they chose to visit. "When I first started in hospitality 30 years ago, the nature of tourism was one direction and one color," Ho said. "It was basically white people from Europe, traveling in one direction, from west to east." "Over the years, what I call 'rainbow tourism' has come up because of increasing wealth in other developing countries," he added. Ho said this has led to a "multicolored, multifaceted, exciting tourism of people from all over the world traveling to all over the world." "You've got Indians, you've got Africans, you've got Arabs, you've got Chinese, and Japanese, and so on, and then of course you've got young people from within the region," he continued. "That to me has been the biggest change." In January, UN Tourism's World Tourism Barometer said an estimated 1.4 billion tourists traveled internationally in 2024, an 11% increase over 2023. UN Tourism said it expected international tourism arrival numbers to grow by 3% to 5% in 2025.
Business Insider
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
An Asia hotel mogul has run a luxury chain for decades. He says hospitality is the worst industry to be in.
Kwon Ping Ho, the founder and executive chair of Banyan Group, has worked in the hospitality industry for over three decades. It can be grueling, the 72-year-old told Business Insider. "The worst business to be in is hospitality," he said, on the sidelines of the International Conference on Cohesive Societies held in Singapore last month. He outlined the challenges of running a global hotel group that has grown to 90 hotels, from Cuba to Saudi Arabia to Japan. "It is so management intensive. It is so time and people-intensive, and it is so vulnerable to event risk," Ho said. "A health disaster like Covid-19. A natural disaster like an earthquake. Political events. It's event risk-based," he added. "So many events can just put travel to a halt." Amid the pandemic-induced hospitality shutdown, Ho said in an interview with CNBC in July 2020 that he took a 100% pay cut. The company also had to lay off up to 15% of its global workforce. The company has since made a recovery. In January 2024, Banyan Group said in a statement that its 2023 performance had surpassed "pre-pandemic metrics across various regional markets." Ho, whose company is now worth nearly $373 million, started his career as a journalist. In 1981, after his father suffered a stroke, he took over the reins of his family business, the Wah Chang Group. In 1994, Ho opened his first resort, Banyan Tree Phuket, after converting an abandoned tin mine he purchased a decade earlier. Ho told BI he's learned two key lessons about running a luxury hotel chain like Banyan Group. "Getting the corporate culture right is so important because people are so important," Ho said. "You go to a hotel. You forget about the 10 good experiences you have. One screw-up, you will never forget. People are not very forgiving about screw-ups," he added. To tackle this, Ho said he tries to create an environment that minimizes fumbles while giving his staff the space to make mistakes and learn from them. "I also learned to be very resilient financially because disasters will always happen," Ho added. "So it's a difficult industry, but it's fun."
