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OYO has become China’s largest hotel chain in terms of room count.
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It has expanded from 320 cities and 450,000 rooms till the fourth week of May 2019 to over 337 cities and 500,000 rooms.
In less than one month’s time, China’s second largest hotel chain in terms of room count, OYO’s China entity- OYO Jiudian has now become the country’s largest hotel chain expanding from 320 cities and 450,000 rooms till the fourth week of May 2019 to over 337 cities and 500,000 rooms.
It has surpassed the “scale of traditional and old established hotel chain brands in the country, such as Hanting, Home Inn and others,” the company mentioned. It is growing at a rapid pace in the past few years along with recent growth in the US.
The recent acquisition of Amsterdam-based vacation rental company Leisure Group around last month has taken OYO’s presence to over 800 cities in 74 countries from earlier over 500 cities in more than 10 countries.
Fundraising Spree of OYO
Rapid scaling of OYO is backed by its large rounds of fundraising on regular intervals. In the recent turn of events, it raised $75 million in April this year from Airbnb after raising $100 million from Didi Chuxing, Softbank, and Grab in February 2019 and December 2018 respectively. It also raised a massive $1 billion round led by SoftBank in September last year.
The company said, “ They have allocated around $100 million from its $600 million commitment earlier for business in China even as it has hired more than 10,000 people and created jobs for more than 200,000 Chinese hospitality enthusiasts.”
Fundraising spree didn’t end with Airbnb round. It is raising another massive $1 billion round of funding from a new investor to lead the round along with existing investors including Grab, DiDi Chuxing, Airbnb, SoftBank, Sequoia and others, reported the financial express.
Sam Shih, COO, OYO China said, “ OYO Jiudain currently gets over 3 lakh travelers resting their heads on OYO Jiudian pillows each night. Company will focus on hiring more people and retaining top talent.” The company appointed Zhu Lei as its Chief Revenue Officer. Lei was the former president at Belgium-based brewing company Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Collaboration for better business
It is collaborating with online travel agencies in China to bring more customer to its properties. OYO partnered with China’s leader OTA Ctrip to generate more demand for each other’s services by offering seamless access to services to customers of both entities.
“Ctrip customers will be able to book a room from within Ctrip app and website as Ctrip gets access to OYO’s vast network of 10,000 hotels in China across 320 cities while OYO gets access to Ctrip’s more than 300 million registered users,” an OYO spokesperson had told Financial Express Online.
It is also working with other OTAs for such tie-ups to focus on customers.
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