OYO becomes second-largest hotel chain in China

Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd, which operates OYO Hotels and Homes, said on Wednesday it has become the second-largest hotel group in China by number of rooms.

OYO launched launched its operations in 26 cities of China last June. The Delhi-based hospitality chain said it has since expanded its presence to 320 cities, 10,000 hotels and 450,000 rooms in China.

OYO claims it has surpassed the scale of traditional and established hotel brands such as Home Inn and Hanting in China. The company said it has focused on smaller cities and towns in China.

The hospitality chain, which recently launched the OYO Partner Engagement Network to bring on board more property owners, said that asset owners who joined the OYO Jiudian (Hotels) group for three months or more have seen their occupancy rates getting doubled.

“Over 97% of our franchisee partners have come back and renewed their contracts. Every day, over 200,000 heads are on OYO Jiudian pillows in China. Today, we are less than 2% of the country’s accommodation market that stands at around 25 million rooms,” said Sam Shih, COO, OYO China. “We are just getting started,” added Shih.

The company recently announced a strategic partnership with Alipay. After three months of getting on-board Fliggy’s platform, several OYO hotels have witnessed significantly improved ratings. In order to improve asset owners’ properties’ visibility to potential consumers, OYO Hotels said that it is collaborating with online travel agents such as Fliggy, Ctrip and others, along with other consumer-traffic building platforms.

Recent developments pertaining to OYO:

• OYO’s China arm delists two hotels and sacks 25 employees for unethical conduct.
• In March, OYO announced that it would invest $200 mn in India and South-east Asia operations this year.
• In April, OYO made its intent known to expand operations to Japan in tandem with SoftBank.
• OYO Lite, a lighter version of OYO’s full app goes live.