[ bworldonline.com ]
Oyo Hotels, which claims to be South Asia’s largest chain of hotels, home, and spaces, currently has 21 franchised and leased hotels with more than 500 rooms in Metro Manila, Tagaytay, and Cebu.
“We at Oyo, our mission…(is) to make affordable living places, to make quality living places… We are very, very excited to… bring this mission in the Philippines,” Abhinav Sinha, Oyo Hotels and Homes global chief operating officer, said during the media launch in Bonifacio Global City on Wednesday.
The company helps small and independent hotels compete with big chains by providing better technology, and improving operational efficiency, including staff training, and revenue management.
Since 2013, Oyo has expanded in 500 cities in India, China, Malaysia, United Kingdom, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia.
For its Philippine expansion, Oyo targets to have a total of about 20,000 rooms in key cities in the Philippines.
“Ours is a business where we have multiple areas where we invest to grow the business in any country. In [the] Philippines, we are committing $50-million towards building capabilities of infrastructure innovation, towards building our technology capabilities in the country, towards investing in building a large team across multiple markets. We are planning to go to more than 10 markets within this year itself. So, the investment will be across technology, across infrastructure innovation, and across building a very strong local team in the country” Mr. Sinha told BusinessWorld in an interview.
The company noted its partner hotels in the Philippines have seen a major leap in occupancy rates. For instance, Oyo 110 Asiatel Hotel, an airport hotel located near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), saw an increase in occupancy from 63% to 82% in just three months after adopting the Oyo brand name.
Ankit Arya, Oyo country head for the Philippines, noted during the same interview that the company is looking for partner hotels in Baguio City, Subic, Angeles City, Clark, Tagaytay City, Batangas City, Naga City, Legazpi City, aside from Metro Manila. It is also considering expansion in Cebu City, Iloilo City, Boracay, Davao and Cagayan de Oro.
For the Philippines, the company expects to generate more than 1,000 direct and indirect job opportunities.
“Within Southeast Asia, of course, Philippines is a very large and significant economy. It also has a very significant in-bound tourism, almost at the scale… mirrors what you see in India and its growing at the pace of more than 10% per annum, so we are very, very committed to [the] Philippines, given the strength of its local economy, given the size of the hotel industry, and given the growth of tourism that the country has seen,” Mr. Sinha said during the interview.
Oyo currently operates over 13,000 franchised or leased hotels and over 3,000 homes as part of its chain around the world. The company is backed by investors such as SoftBank Group, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Hero Enterprise and China Lodging Group. — Vincent Mariel P. Galang
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