OYO upgrades its app for hotel owners and offers financing, marketing support and timely payments

• OYO has launched a partner network for its 8,700+ asset owners.
• OYO is the 6th largest hotel chain in the world currently.
• In India, over 15 cities have 200 OYO hotels per city.

OYO is beefing up technology platform and is now looking to build a partner network of hotel owners, much like the big technology giants like Microsoft, HP, Amazon, who have a network of distributors, vendors and retail partners.

The move seems to be targeted at extending the company’s reach and brand to a wider and deeper audience on the hotel owner side. OYO, which hasn’t yet celebrated its 5th anniversary, has been growing fast and taking on big hotel chains like Hyatt, Choice hotels among others. Now, in a bid to grow to the world’s largest hotel chain (it currently ranks sixth), OYO has turned its focus to hotel owner or asset partners, promising them several new services.

OYO which already has an app for travellers for bookings, had a parallel app for hotel owners to manage the same and also their business transactions. OYO has now upgraded the app (called Co-OYO) to offer hotel owners financing help through its network of Indian banks, marketing support to boost their reach, help in compliance with regulations through access to top law and accounting firms and timely payments by assuring an interest of 18% on delayed payments. The hotel chain has also included technological solutions like OYO OS, a property management system.

These new services will be available to over 8,700 hotel owners in OYO’s current network.

At the launch of the network called OPEN - OYO Partner Engagement Network, Aditya Ghosh, CEO, India & South Asia, OYO hotels, spoke about the company’s plans to expand fast.

“Today with the launch of OPEN, we are laying the foundations of a structured way of exchanging ideas, providing support and most importantly, building a relationship of trust on which we hope to build the next several decades to come. We are doing this in several ways but in this fast moving world, being in touch on a real-time basis is key and therefore for the very first time in the hospitality industry, we are proud to launch the Co-OYO app which will transparently provide business metrics,” said Aditya Ghosh, CEO, India & South Asia, of OYO Hotels.

OYO has 175,000+ rooms in India, whereas in China it has 322,000+ rooms and in the rest of the world put together, it is adding 60,000 rooms every month. In India, over 15 cities have 200 OYO hotels per city.

“Some of the largest hotel chains in India which have been around for 100 years have 20,000 rooms, And OYO in 30 days added 60,000 new rooms. I have been asked this question are we growing too fast? I believe we are not growing fast enough,” said Ghosh.

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