OYO Rooms Goes International Launches Operations in Malaysia

By BW Hotelier WITH OVER 40,000 rooms in its network in India, OYO Rooms has announced its foray into Southeast Asia through launch of operations in Malaysia. OYO Rooms offers standardized stays at hotels across India, with features such as an air conditioned room, complimentary breakfast and Wi-Fi with 24x7 customer service support. Guests can use the OYO Rooms App (over 2.5 million downloads) for booking rooms, ordering room service (food and beverages), booking a cab and searching nearby restaurants. Sharing company’s plans for this year, Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, OYO Rooms, (see photo) said, ’Unbranded hotel room supply accounts for a majority share of hotel supply worldwide. Taking the company international has always been on the cards but we wanted to achieve clear market leadership in India before heading overseas. OYO’s model is suitable for markets with large share of unbranded budget supply such as Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. Malaysia is our first port-of-call given the attractive characteristics of the market such as higher-than-average mobile penetration and a large internet population.’ Speaking on what this means for Indian professionals engaged with the start-up space, Agarwal added, ’I am also excited that OYO can provide a global platform for Indian talent to showcase their passion and execution-focus on entrepreneurial projects. As one of the few Indian start-ups to have gone international, our current and future employees can look forward to exciting learning and development opportunities across various international markets.’ In addition, OYO Rooms has partnered with merchant discovery and privileges platform Crown-it. The strategic alliance between Crown-it and OYO Rooms is aimed at providing the finest budget stays and cashbacks to Crown-it users by adding OYO Rooms’ selection to its ’Hotel’ category. The latest partnership will allow Crown-it users to book discounted lodging across various cities, for both business and leisure trips. The API integration between Crown-it and OYO Rooms is set to simplify the entire process of searching, selection and booking a room. With nearly 500+ OYO properties going live with the launch of this integration, the company will bring added value to its users’ hotel reservations as well as increased convenience, right at their fingertips. Abhineet Sawa, VP ’ Marketing, OYO Rooms, said, ’We are thrilled to bring OYO Rooms’ exciting value-proposition to Crown-it’s young and engaged user-base. Our standardized offerings priced affordably will enable Crown-it users to plan more journeys, get rewarded and discover the joy of travel with OYO Rooms.’ Sameer Grover, Founder, Crown-it, added, ’Value addition and consumer convenience were a few reasons for which Crown-it was established. This partnership with OYO Rooms gives us a chance to add to our range of options in our Hotel category, and allows us to assist our users in their search for affordable, value-for-money hotel reservations. Given the popularity of OYO rooms, we are confident that our users will benefit from this association.’