Oyo Jiudian, the Chinese subsidiary of Oyo Hotels & Homes, will add another 50,000 rooms to its inventory this month which will touch the half-a-million rooms mark in China, and a substantial part of its inventory will be listed on China’s biggest OTA Ctrip by the end of this month, Maninder Gulati, global chief strategy officer at Oyo Hotels & Homes, told ET. Oyo had announced last month that it had entered into a strategic partnership with Ctrip.
“We would be touching the half-a-million mark in China by this month. We are already present in 320 cities in China and have 450,000 rooms, which covers a large amount of breadth. Ctrip is the most influential distributor in China. We are still figuring out all the technical integrations. Sometime this month, a substantial portion would start to feature in (on Ctrip).
“Whether it is Airbnb or Ctrip, these are great partnerships for us because as a hotel and accommodation chain, we concentrate on creating great products and experiences for consumers and we look forward to such large partnerships to make those products and experiences available to millions of customers that are part of these platforms on a daily basis,” Gulati said.
US home sharing company Airbnb has invested $75 million in Oyo as per regulatory filings. Gulati said these partnerships go beyond plain vanilla listing arrangements and that “none of its partners are its competitors”.
“Whether it is Airbnb, or Ctrip, or Go-MMT, none of them are competitors as they are distributors and we are a sort of accommodation chain which franchises and leases different types of real estate. Now even Airbnb distributes hotels, so all of these platforms distribute multiple types of real estate. Our job is to create great living spaces which vary across real estate,” said Gulati.
Oyo had acquired Amsterdam-based vacation rental company @Leisure Group, which manages holiday homes, holiday parks and holiday apartments in Europe for an estimated 369.5 million Euros last month.
Gulati said the company will go deeper in the 13 cities in Europe that @Leisure is present in. “@leisure has 30,000 fully managed homes across 13 countries in Europe and already works with Airbnb and Booking.com and several others and when Oyo comes in and grows that base of supply that partnership further strengthens.,” he said.
