Banyan Tree Phuket

In the early 1980s the land behind Bang Tao Bay, on the west coast of Phuket, was a worked-out tin mine: stripped lagoons, exhausted soil and very little shade. On that ground Ho Kwon Ping and Claire Chiang opened Banyan Tree Phuket in 1994, the first hotel of the group that now carries the name across Asia and well beyond it. The resort sits within Laguna Phuket, the development their company built on the reclaimed site, and its walled pool villas set a pattern that resorts across the region went on to follow.

History

Ho, a former journalist from a Singapore business family, and his wife acquired the site in 1984, when it was widely considered beyond rescue. Years of replanting and rehabilitation turned the old mine lagoons into the waterways that now link the Laguna hotels. Larger hotels opened around the lagoons first. Banyan Tree Phuket followed in 1994, together with the first Banyan Tree Spa, which helped turn the Asian resort spa into a category of its own. Banyan Tree Holdings listed on the Singapore Exchange in 2006, and the brand grew into a portfolio of resorts, spas, galleries and residences. The Phuket resort has been renovated and extended over the years, but its role as the founding property is central to the way the group tells its story.

Architecture and design

The villas follow a low Thai pavilion form, with pitched roofs, timber and walled gardens that give each unit its own pool and outdoor living space. Privacy is the organising idea. Lagoons, paths and planting separate the villas, and the scale stays domestic, with no tower and no single dominant building. Three decades of growth have softened the site, and trees planted on bare mine ground now shade the paths between the villas.

Rooms and suites

Accommodation is entirely in villas, each with a private pool, a garden and a bathroom that opens onto it. Larger residences with several bedrooms suit families and groups travelling together. A cluster of villas built around their own treatment rooms lets guests have spa therapies without leaving their walls.

Dining

Saffron, the group's Thai restaurant, has one of its kitchens here, cooking dishes from the different regions of Thailand. Other restaurants and a lagoon-side bar complete the offer, and private dinners can be arranged in the villas or by the water. The wider Laguna Phuket complex adds a long list of restaurants, reached by shuttle boat across the lagoons or by buggy.

Wellness

The spa is the reason many guests choose this resort. Banyan Tree Spa began here, and its treatments draw on Thai and wider Asian traditions, with therapists trained at the group's own academy in Phuket. Treatment pavilions look onto gardens and water. Laguna Golf Phuket, an 18-hole course, lies next to the resort, and the beach at Bang Tao is a buggy ride away.

Weddings and events

The resort hosts weddings and vow renewals, usually staged in the gardens, beside the lagoon or on the beach, with receptions in the restaurants or on private lawns. Corporate retreats and incentive groups also use it, often in combination with the other Laguna hotels.

Location

Laguna Phuket lies behind Bang Tao Bay, one of the longest beaches on the island's west coast, with Surin to the south and Layan to the north. Phuket International Airport is about 25 minutes by car, and Phuket Old Town, with its Sino-Portuguese shophouses, around 40 minutes. For a luxury resort on Phuket, Banyan Tree offers an unusual combination: villa seclusion inside a larger complex of hotels, shops and a golf course. Guests who want only their villa and the spa can stay inside the walls for days, while those who want more have the whole of Laguna within reach without calling a taxi.