OYO plans to set up CoE in Kolkata; put in place a digital record system

Hospitality firm OYO Hotels and Rooms said it is working on a roadmap for one million room inventory from the existing count of 4.6 lakh. “We will have one million rooms inventory into our fold in the near distant future. I think, it should happen in a year and a half,” said OYO CEO, India and South Asia, Aditya Ghosh. This will help OYO to become the “world’s top player from number three now”, he claimed.

The company has set a target of 2.5 million rooms by 2023, its promoter Ritesh Agarwal said. At present, OYO has over 13,000 franchised and leased hotels, and over 450,000 rooms, adding over 64,000 rooms every month, globally. “In India, we have over 8,700 leased and franchised hotels, and more than 164,000 rooms,” a company official said. The firm has changed from the aggregator model to own inventories through the franchisee or lease operation model.

In China, a traditionally strong market for corporates, OYO’s revenue is lower despite having a higher inventory of about 1.8 lakh rooms in that country, the official said. OYO has active presence in seven countries, and is planning to expand to at least 15 countries with focus on Asian nations. Over the next few weeks, it is expected to announce a fresh corporate growth plan focused on Asia and Japan, where it aims to become the largest player by the 2020 Summer Olympics, company officials said.

The hospitality firm is also aggressively putting in place a digital record system to facilitate direct data sharing of customers’ arrivals and departures with various state governments. The state governments of Haryana, Rajasthan and Telangana have so far shown interest in this digital record system, Ghosh said. OYO has extended an offer to the West Bengal government, too, to maintain a realtime data repository for ‘Digital Arrival and Departure Register’.