When it came to selecting a location for their first ever resort, the founders of Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts settled on a 600 acre site in Phuket, Thailand – vast swathes of picturesque coastal land punctuated by lagoons of the most intense cobalt blue.
It soon transpired, however, that the beauty of the site had little to do with the marvels of mother nature and was, in fact, the result of extensive polluting by the site’s previous tenant, a tin mine.
Rather than walking away, the founders set in motion a chain of events that has come to define the luxury hotel chain. They dedicated themselves to cleansing the acid-laden soil and planted more than 7,000 trees, painstakingly transforming an ecological wasteland into the environmentally-sensitive site of the first ever Banyan Tree resort.
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“Banyan Tree is about the romance of travel and giving people a ‘sense of place’,” explained David Barclay, assistant vice president of design, Architrave Design and Planning, the design arm of the Banyan Tree Group.
“Through the design and architecture of our resorts, we promote the uniqueness of indigenous cultures. Each Banyan Tree resort is designed to blend into its natural surroundings, using locally-made materials as far as possible, and reflecting the landscape and architecture of the destination,” he added.
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