Valentine’s Day – The Best Day for OYO Rooms

• This valentine’s day OYO rooms already witnessed a 90% hike in bookings.
• In 2016, OYO Rooms made a statement where they mentioned that the hotel chain welcomes unmarried couples as well.
• A guest reserved a stay with OYO for Valentines’ Day as early as 24^th August 2019.

While OYO rooms were recently occupied with mass layoffs in China, the USA, and India. 14^th Feb – Valentine’s day popped up with some good times for the hotel chain.

Bookings for OYO rooms witnessed a 90% jump this time. Finally, something good appeared after a round of disruptions coming from this hotel chain. We are still not sure if the numbers are inflated (like before) or they are true, but it seems like OYO rooms are enjoying valentine’s day.

What Made Valentines Day so special for OYO Rooms?

Let’s talk from a marketing point of view and for some time forget the 90% sales figure. During normal days OYO rooms are more or less silent and concerned in diversification and expansion.

But as soon as the season of love approaches, the hotel chain enters into the picture with tons of creatives, discounts and with reasons/mailers and messages that are close to irresistible.

This time, OYO rolls out #ValentinesTogetherAlone – to encourage people to imagine the idea of celebrating love beyond a day.

Under this campaign, there are 14 different things to do – one for each day. This initiative received a lot of wooing from OYO lovers overseas.

Let’s See What 2019 Looked Like:

The team issued OYO Love Index 2019 to reveal their success in numbers. OYO India saw a 112% increase in bookings around valentine’s day as compared to the same period last year.

63% of bookings were from couples, 22% of bookings came from friends, families, and others. If we talk about destinations, Goa was the most preferred one followed by Delhi & Bangalore.

Maximum single bookings came from Delhi. A majority of bookings came from the mobile app as compared to web bookings. In fact, mobile booking showed 6.5X more growth (as compared to web bookings) this year as compared to Feb 2018.

Nikhil and Neha Chawla – our social media influencer couple booked OYO Home in Goa on 13^th Feb 2019. To surprise the couple, the OYO team arranged a spa session followed by a candlelight dinner for the two of them.

Is It Just OYO Rooms Promoting Themselves on Valentine’s Day?

Probably NO! Even before we tell you this, we are sure you have scrolled a number of memes for 14^th Feb and OYO rooms!

While memes make us smile, laugh and share at the same time, they do a lot of brand promotion indirectly. Here are some amazing memes that rolled out on different social media platforms.

Everyone knows that OYO rooms (or any of their verticals) always welcome unmarried couples so that they can enjoy their own space and have good times.

India is a place where unmarried couples are treated like sinners. Especially on 14^th Feb, alliances come out in public and make sure that there is not unmarried couple roaming here and there like lovebirds and spoiling the environment of the society.

During these dark times, OYO rooms emerged as a savage hotel chain. It is solving an existing mindset and problem wherein couples in India face inconveniences as a few hotels allow them to book a room. OYO launched a “relationship mode” on its app, through which users could find couple-friendly hotels.

It’s not just the #ValentinesTogetherAlone campaign. Several other campaigns with unique hashtags like #StayInLove #NoRoomForHate #CheckInForLove are doing amazing promotions for OYO rooms.

Apart from Campaigns, Anything Else That They Are Doing?

Definitely yes! Since they are the budgeted hotel chain, OYO rooms have made sure that they present irresistible deals and offers that one is not able to deny and check-in somewhere else.

• Customers are said to receive INR 250 cashback between 1-15^th Feb bookings.
• By using the OYOVALENTINE coupon code, guests can avail 50% discount on the booking prices.
• For ICICI Bank customers, OYO rolled out another coupon code – VDAYICICI and they can get a 60% flat discount on the booking price.

But It’s Not Just OYO Rooms Who Are Doing This:

Realizing the potential of unmarried couples’ market in the hotel market, almost all hotel chains now welcome unmarried couples.

Unmarried couples have actually become a niche that has players like OYO rooms, Treebo hotels. StayUncle is another player that’s all concerned about a couple stays only. BreviStay, LoveStay are other players who are emerging and growing but slowly and steadily.

StayUncle founder Sanchit Sethi initially planned to target business travelers and focused on charging travelers on an hourly basis but when he began fielding inquiries from couples, he realized that there is a whole new niche. Why target business travelers on an hourly basis?

Soon the team shifted its focus from business travelers to married/unmarried couples with a tagline “Couples need a room not judgment”

One special thing about StayUncle that makes it different from OYO rooms is that StayUncle comes with a love kit! Yes, you heard it right, the love kit!

StayUncle’s branded silky red pouch “Love Kit” contains condoms, lubricant, and chocolate. Hotel staff is strictly asked to respect unmarried couples which is why they have been getting repeat business.

There are players who are competing head to head against OYO rooms, but no one is able to offer a room so affordable (and standardized). StayUncle is much more expensive than OYO rooms!

All in all, our made in India chain of hotels is a giant not only in terms of a number of hotels PAN India but its also a giant in the number of bookings received by them during these days.

Summing Up:

Here is another interesting insight. We use the keywords planner to see how many people have searched for a particular thing. Here is something we’ve got to share:

2018:

• There were 1K-10K searches for “OYO near me” in India. The number of searches was the same next year as well.

2020:

• OYO near me was searched with a range of 10-100K.
• In UK & USA search results for OYO near me were 1-10K.

This Valentine’s day, OYO rooms did things that wooed coupled and brought deals that were irresistible. We are yet to see the search results and trend results for Feb’s month. But this was all coming from OYO rooms this year, this Valentine’s week.