Zo Rooms to add service apartments, four star hotels

Budget hotels aggregator Zo Rooms will soon add four star hotels and service apartments to its network.

Next month, the startup will launch Zo Star (for four star properties) and Zo Apartments (corporate guest houses), its co-founder and CEO Dharamveer Singh Chouhan said.

Zo Rooms, which is run by Zostel Hospitality Pvt Ltd, will also launch a premium version for budget rooms under the Zo Prime branding.

"We want to solve the short-stay accommodation problem, be it with Zostel, Zo Rooms, Zo Prime or Zo Star. We will bring our standardised experience for users everywhere," said Chouhan.

He did not provide more details on the targets for Zo Star and Zo Apartments.

Zo Rooms competes with the likes of OYO Rooms, ZiP Rooms, Wudstay, Zen Rooms, Vista Rooms and Ibibo's goStays among others. Anchored on an asset-light business model, these firms are essentially aggregating standalone budget hotels, strapping them with a common brand with a promise to the consumer to offer a standardised set of amenities like a conventional budget hotel chain.

They are seen as a new breed of accommodation booking providers against large online travel agencies (OTAs) such as MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, akbartravelsonline.com and others who simply list hotels of all categories.

In June, Zo Rooms said that its network has over 400 Hotels. Its parent company raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global and Orios Venture Partners.

OYO Rooms, which is one of the largest players in this space, recently raised $100 million in funding from Japanese internet conglomerate SoftBank and others. It will use this money to expand the size of its network to 50,000 rooms across 100 cities by the end of this year.

Zostel Hospitality also runs a separate booking platform for branded hostels and budget hotels under the Zostel brand.

Zostel, which started operations in 2013, currently operates hostel properties across Delhi, Goa, Jodhpur, Agra and other cities. In August, Zostel added a hostel in the Vietnamese city of Dalat to its network.

In a video interaction with Techcircle.in, Chouhan sheds light on his journey in the hospitality space and charts the way forward for Zo Rooms and Zostel.

Watch the video for more details...