OYO woos biz travellers with collection O; ups investment

Chennai: OYO Hotels and Homes has committed Rs 1,400 crore for its India and South Asia business. It has also added a new mid-market brand for the business class, Collection O, with a target of having 650 hotels and 20,000 rooms under the brand.

According to the company, the investment will be utilised to double down expansion plans, improve customer experience and ensure increase in continued asset owner success. The aim is to deepen and widen presence across India while focusing on aggressive capacity building to bring the choice of a beautiful living space of an OYO hotel to every corner of the country. However, the company did not specify on how many more hotels and keys it will add to its existing portfolio.

OYO currently has a presence in over 259 cities with 8,700 hotels and homes and more than 173,000 keys in India. In 2018 itself, OYO added presence in over 81 cities.

Globally, OYO Hotels & Homes is now present in 10 countries, over 500 cities and has over 18,000 hotels and homes with 515,000 rooms.

“We are committing over Rs 1,400 crore for technology investments, renovation, and managing investments for the calendar year, and will provide more, if needed, to help the team ensure continued economically efficient growth,” said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and Group CEO.

OYO also has launched the new brand, Collection O. The other hotel brands in its portfolio include OYORooms, Townhouse, SilverKey and Palette Resorts. These brands a provide budget to premium as well as mid-scale services.

“Collection O has been introduced under our hotel portfolio to target business travellers. Considering the requirements of discerning business travellers, the category focuses on bigger, more spacious rooms, high-speed wifi, workstations in every room, 24X7 in-room dinning, unlimited breakfast, laundry on request and OYO trained customer service. We are launching with 12 Collection O hotels and we aim to have 650 hotels with 20,000 rooms in 2019,” the company said.

Overall, the company’s focus is on investing and franchise building to take advantage of the global $3.6 trillion accommodation market opportunity.

OYO has been showing improvements in its financial parameters. Its losses as a percentage of realised value, or sales run rate, had reduced from 44.5 per cent in FY17 to 20.3 per cent year-on-year in FY18.