“No formal communication is done about the boycott from Budget Hotels,” OYO’s Spoke Person

OYO

“We would first like to clarify that OYO is India’s largest chain of franchised and leased hotels. We are not an online portal or online travel agent or an aggregator, and as a hotel chain, we cannot comment on “booking portals”.

While aggregators charge a commission for discoverability of hotels and homes on their portals, OYO Hotels and Homes operate franchised and leased hotels. We are in the transformation and hotel operations business and either charge a mutually agreed franchise fees or pay a fixed lease cost.

Today, OYO Hotels and Homes, a full-scale hotel chain, operates over thousands of franchised and leased hotels in India and hosts millions of guests from around the world. We are currently in over 230 cities in India and have grown our footprints to over 500 cities globally. More and more people choose OYO every year than any other hotel chain in the country, and that is because of our collective focus on delivering high-quality customer experiences.

As for the boycott claims, this is a threat and we have not received any formal communication from any of our asset owners.  In this context, we would like to also reiterate that most of the boycott claims are being made by small vested interest groups with no property franchised with or leased to OYO Hotels. As franchisors, we continue to engage with our franchise hotel owners on a one to one basis to resolve issues and in case, we don’t reach a mutually acceptable solution, part ways amicably. While we work towards addressing such issues, our primary focus is to ensure that the consumer at all times has access to affordable, reliable and good quality accommodations.

However, some such individuals have also been threatening to cancel agreements and not accept online bookings, which will be a default of the contractual arrangements and will lead to legal liabilities on these individuals as we cannot and will not let anyone hamper the customer experience. We will take strict legal action.

Lastly, unlike claims by certain individuals with vested interests, OYO Hotels has not charged franchise fees over 25%, and neither does it intend to unless it invests in capital expenditure to transform a home or hotel space for better footfalls and occupancy. We have, on the contrary, invested over thousands of crores in CapEx, appointed hundreds of GMs to oversee operations and customer experience, and introduced technology-driven innovations in the hospitality sector that has greatly transformed the standard of service delivered by a once unbranded hotel, now part of the OYO chain. On an average, over 75% of hotel owners associated with OYO Hotels have seen an increase of 20-30% in occupancy, a 2.5 x jump in RevPar and a significant jump in profit, for every asset operating as an OYO branded property.”

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