Steven Wolstenholme, Former CEO of Hoiana Resort, on Learning to Belong
What does it really take to lead one of Asia’s most ambitious integrated resorts? In a candid conversation with Victor Burrill, Chief Connecting Officer of the Business Executive Network Vietnam, Steven Wolstenholme reflects on building trust, creating a culture of dignity, and knowing when it’s time to pass the baton.
When Steven Wolstenholme logs onto Zoom from Perth, the morning light is slanting across the room. He’s calm and measured, hair neatly combed, his delivery deliberate—he’s the kind of leader who weighs his words but never hesitates to speak the truth. There’s a seriousness about him, earned over decades of leading hospitality and gaming ventures worldwide, but beneath it is something gentler: a dry wit, a streak of humility, and a deep belief in people.
Even after his recent move to Australia, Steve—as he likes to be called—remains closely connected to Vietnam, both in an advisory capacity and through frequent visits. He was recently appointed as an Independent Director of Asian Coast Development Ltd. (ACDL), the developer of The Grand Ho Tram integrated resort.
Born in the UK and a dual UK–US citizen, Steve has spent the better part of his 40-year career leading large-scale hospitality projects across North America and Asia. A civil engineer by training, he shifted into the casino world early on—a career move sparked, as he tells it, by little more than curiosity and a James Bond fantasy. What followed was a journey through boardrooms, building sites, and pre-openings that took him from Las Vegas to Macau—then the Mecca of gaming development—to the Philippines, and eventually Vietnam.
Steve had never stepped foot in Vietnam before accepting the role to build and lead one of the country’s most ambitious integrated resort projects, Hoiana Resort and Golf, but that first visit sparked something. “I didn’t know much about the country,” he recalls. “But I immediately recognized its charm.” That initial impression and the opportunity to build something from the ground up, made his decision easy. “I consider it, in many ways, a second home.”
For nearly seven years, Steve served as President and CEO of Hoiana, helping to bring the project to life and laying the foundations for a culture built on trust and local empowerment. However, when he first arrived at the Hoiana site in 2018, it was little more than a stretch of coastline with a few small dwellings. The opportunity came with complexity, but that only deepened his sense of purpose. The vision was immense: nearly a thou sand-hectare, multi-phase development with a USD $4 billion investment and a first phase of $1.5 billion.
“My background in civil engineering helped,” he says, having managed similar billion-dollar builds in Canada, Macau, and the Philippines. But this one was slightly different. “Yes, like the other Integrated Resorts, there was a casino, but that was a relatively new business in Vietnam, and it’s a key driver for this kind of investment. Ultimately, I saw it as more of a real estate investment, and Central Vietnam is perfectly positioned for that kind of development.”
Beyond the scale, what made it unique was the people. Steve is quick to praise Vietnam’s workforce—young, eager, and, as he puts it, “quite savvy, especially with tech and social media.” In his experience, more developed countries often produce a sense of entitlement. “But in Vietnam,” he says, “there’s a hunger to learn the business. That stands out. It’s a major asset.”
Still, Vietnam is not without its complications. The regulatory environment, especially in gaming, proved tricky. “There can be some vagueness when it comes to structure or the approval process. We talk about there being a gray area—what’s black and white is more prominent in some jurisdictions—but in Vietnam, there is a yearning for clarity within that gray area, not only on behalf of the operator but also on behalf of the regulatory authorities,” he explains. “You have to adapt to ensure that you get clarity when it isn’t always there in the first place.”
One of his tools for cutting through the fog: building relationships. “You build those relationships not necessarily in a boardroom or meeting room,” he says, “but sometimes on a very low seat in a charming rural coffee shop. And that has a lot of value.
What Steve describes isn’t tran- sactional leadership—it’s stewardship. It’s about cultivating pride and mutual respect, even in the smallest decisions. “I think it’s about ensuring that there’s no ridicule—the respect that you show local people, the country that, quite honestly, as expats, we’re guests in—that you’re showing that respect regardless of your position,” he says. He shares an anecdote about how he would sometimes get confused looks when there would be a woman from the cleaning staff in the elevator, and he would hold the door to let her out first. He pauses, then adds with a smile, “My mother passed away some years ago, but I know she’s looking down on me, and if it wasn’t ladies first, she would be frowning somewhere.
That same respect extended to the accommodations he helped design for staff—so good, he says, people “gloated” to friends and family about living there. This carried through to every level of the Hoiana experience, from the front of house to the back.
The staff cafeteria was a particular win. Staff meals were free, locally sourced, good, and generous. Retention strategies didn’t stop with material comforts. What Steve aimed to build was a sense of ownership.
“If you can make your company exceptional, then it’s not necessarily about the paycheck,” he says. “It’s the respect that you’re giving your employees by giving them something that they can be proud of—even brag about. The other part of retention is to ensure that there’s no glass ceiling. You don’t have to be a Western guy to move up through the ranks. You can be a local and aspire, and achieve the loftiest positions within the organization.”
At Hoiana, that commitment translated into a full-fledged internal academy, training frontline staff to grow into supervisory and eventually executive roles. “The responsibility of expat talent is to teach others. If you don’t take on the role of teaching others, then you shouldn’t be in the role at all. And the challenge with Vietnam sometimes is that people come there, and they love it. They want to stay there and protect their tenure. So, they are less inclined to teach others. And that, in my view, is completely unacceptable.
His leadership style is equal parts people and passion. The story he tells about one of his early mentors reinforces this: “Spend 30 minutes a week reading about your business and at the end of your shift, once a week, go and be a nuisance and put yourself in a kitchen somewhere,” the mentor had advised. “Do that for one year, and you will have more knowledge than 90% of your colleagues. And when it comes to promotion, you’ll be the obvious choice.”
“Most people go to work because it’s their job. But if you go to work because it’s your vision, and you have passion, then it’s not that difficult to stand out.”
Steven’s reflections on Vietnam are laced with both admiration and practical insight. “If we look at Vietnam, and we look at KPIs for Vietnam—you know, GDP growth and these types of things—Vietnam’s doing tremendous,” he says. At the same time, he’s candid about the country’s growing pains. Regulatory discipline, he explains, is still a work in progress. As a business leader in Vietnam, he believes it’s critical to navigate these complexities collaboratively, offering guidance while also being open to learning. It’s not just about holding the government’s hand, he says, but allowing them to hold yours too. Transparency may be inconsistent, and there’s often vagueness in approval processes, but if both parties are willing to work together, “you can make tremendous strides.”
However, he reiterates, like any business that is doing well, it could always do better. When you’re doing well in a business, your competitors start to look at what you’re doing, and if you become complacent, you can lose that traction. He points to areas like bureaucracy, visa policy, and foreign investment as needing additional modernization. “It’s not about a short-term approach, which is: ‘What’s good for me?’ It’s a medium-and long-term approach: ‘What’s good for me needs to be good for the country. What’s good for the country, I can be part of.’ ”
He describes a deep and distinctive sense of national pride that stands out even among other countries where he has worked. While pride exists everywhere, he feels it is particularly pronounced in Vietnam. For leaders, he says, the key is not just to live in the country, but to truly belong—to embrace its cultural nuances, acknowledge the differences, and take joy in them.
The way to do that, according to Steve, is humility. Arrive not just as an expert, but as someone ready to learn.
“I tried to learn a little Vietnamese,” he admits, “but I’d say something and just get a blank stare.” He laughs, more at himself than the language. It’s the kind of moment that sums up much of what Steve values most—curiosity, humility, and never pretending to already know the answer.
His final advice to incoming CEOs? Listen. Learn. Read about your business. Sit with staff. Attend their gatherings and their weddings.
There’s something steadying about his perspective. Maybe it’s the engineer in him or the father. Or maybe it’s just the mark of someone who, along with resorts, has built real trust, one relationship at a time.
