Hotel startup Oyo Hotels & Homes on Thursday has launched a programme to expand and update technology and give financial support for their huge network of hotel partners. The new programme is also to get more engagements.
Oyo works with over 8,700 hotel operators in 259 cities in India and over South Asia and also made a huge investment in the OYO Partner Engagement Network for its partner hotels to get their hands on technology, easier financing options, and assist them with regulatory and legal issues on its platform.
The company also introduced an upgraded Co-OYO app, “specially designed for partner franchisees to keep them updated on payment-related information in one place. Through the Co-OYO app, asset owners in India can have complete visibility on cash flows, business performance, pricing, customer reviews and recommendations,” the company added.
ALSO READ: Increff raises $3 million in Series A funding round
The way Oyo works is basically tieing up local hotel owners across cities in India and overseas and brings them under its brand name and bookings. This has prompted the company to step up the way it engages with its partners.
“We thought what can we do to make a bigger difference in the lives of our asset owners, and how do we learn from them? How do we create a scalable platform where we can engage in a structured way,” Aditya Ghosh, CEO, India & South Asia at OYO said in an interview. So we thought let us put together a partner advisory council that will create a governance framework that will represent employees, and the industry and our partners and we then become a platform where we exchange ideas and provide support and most importantly, building a relationship of trust. In the process, we have also upgraded our technology that our partners can access, he added.
Currently, OYO operates in more 500 cities across 10 countries with over 18,000 franchised or leased hotels in its chain and over 6000 homes. Airbnb Inc also invested a whopping $200 million in the company.
The company’s other investors include SoftBank Group, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Hero Enterprise and China Lodging Group.