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OYO Rooms — Hotel Review and Analysis — Should you book an OYO Room?

I stayed at two OYO rooms properties last month to understand the value they offer, pros and cons of staying with them and what is their promise to travellers. I also spoke in detail with Kavikrut, Chief Growth Officer at OYO on why a traveller should stay with OYO.

oyo roomsIf you live in any large city in India, you are probably not very far from a hotel touting the name of OYO rooms. OYO has expanded rapidly in recent months and has a large number of budget accommodation choices, now spread over hundred cities across India.

OYO Rooms proposition: predictability, availabily, accessibility, affordability

Kavikrut, Chief Growth Officer at OYO confirms that they are rapidly expanding  and bringing in a large number of hotels under their brand name. This is evident when you look for a room on their website. A quick search for Delhi returns 223 hotels. In Bangalore, they have 154 and 59 in Ahmedabad. They also have a presence in holiday destinations such as Ooty, Alleppey or Darjeeling, though in much smaller numbers.

The rapid expansion has been possible by working with existing budget to mid-range hotels and branding them as OYO. The hotels are managed by the property-owners according to a given set of standards and are marketed by OYO. According to Kavikrut, having a large number of choices ensures guaranteed availability–one of the four key values that OYO intends to provide. Others being affordability, accessibility and predictability.

A considerable number of their accommodations are priced at Rs.999. On the higher side, prices rarely go beyond Rs.3,000. OYO intends to work with properties within this budgets range in large cities, while they may add more expensive accommodations in leisure holiday destinations.

For the predictability part, OYO makes some minor modifications and improvements to the rooms to fit to their standards. They boast of a 250-checkpoint standardization in their rooms that offers some certainty to the guests walking in. This includes the facilities available in the room such as the type of linen, mattress, air-conditioning, wifi, type of showers and consummable materials. A frequent quality audit conducted by an OYO staff at the property ensures that everything is maintained in order.

How much of these work as claimed? I had a chance to stay at two OYO properties last month to discover this myself.

Staying with OYO rooms – review and experience

My first stay was at OYO Premium Connaught Place, which also goes with the name Hotel Emarald. The check-in was efficient and I was led to my rooms in no time. The room was clean and the bed was comfortable. The place had a premium-budget feel and there wasn’t much to complain. Here is a quick audit of the room.

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The rates for this property on OYO website was much less than the hotel’s own website and several third-party online-booking websites.

The second property I booked was a budget hotel – OYO Rooms Connaught Circus. Here is my checklist for the property.

oyo rooms oyo rooms

At Rs. 1,649, although this was a basic property, it was priced competitively for a prime location.

Both the places were spotlessly clean and maintained very well. Service was acceptable–nothing to rave about but nothing deficient either. I had little to complain, and would be more than happy to return to either of the properties or recommend them to anyone. But I did find a few discrepancies. In both the properties, the pictures I saw on OYO website did not match the looks of the room that I checked in to.

I pointed these discrepancies to Kavikrut. Two possibilities emerged. In the case of ‘OYO Premium Connaught Place’, the confusion came from OYO’s policy of selling different kind of rooms in a property at the same price. For example, if the property owners originally had deluxe and standard rooms sold at different prices, Oyo puts them all in the same bracket and sells them at one price. There was a good chance that I saw photographs of a premium room on the website, but I was shown into a standard room when I checked-in. Even if the price you pay may be appropriate for a standard room, you may have come with some expectations that will not be met in such situations.

It was a different story in OYO Rooms Connaught Circus. In this property, the room I saw matched the photographs, but the bed linen in the photos had a more premium look than what I found. Kavikrut attributed this to a possible temporary shortfall of OYO standardized linen.

While this may not go very well with a guest walking in, I must mention that both the rooms had acceptable decor, clean linen and remained a good value for the price that OYO offered.

For what kind of travellers are OYO rooms suitable?

This was one of the questions I asked Kavikrut. The answers took me by surprise. I was hoping for something within the regular classification of travellers such as family, budget, business or holiday. Besides catering to all such travellers, OYO also seems to have found takers who are not people visiting from another city. Some examples he pointed out includes –

  1. People who have a long commute from work to home (say, Gurgaon to Noida) and were very late at work to head home.
  2. A power cut at home; OYO property nearby would have generators.
  3. Gather with friends to watch football matches (during the last world cup) during the night.

And when I asked why a traveller should consider booking with OYO, he pointed out two important factors – affordability and availability. Both the OYO properties that I stayed with were certainly affordable, and the rapid growth has now ensured availability in large cities.

The future – integration of travel services

While creating new properties is an operations-intense activity, the travellers’ side is very technology driven. Your bookings can happen on an app that helps you pick a property. It could be paid through an e-wallet or at the hotel on arrival. When you are checked in, you can request for room service through the app rather than phone call.

But OYO app is looking to go beyond this and integrate with other travel-related service providers as well. It is currently connected with Ola to help book a cab to take you to the property on arrival at a city. Next, Kavikrut mentioned about the possibility of integration with Zomato, which will help you find a place to eat near the hotel where you are staying. They are also working with another company to make tour guides available at the city where you have travelled to. OYO intends to make their app a place to look-up for any services that a traveller would require.

Conclusions

Would I book an OYO Room? I would. It would be one the of the first places to search for a room if I am looking for a budget accommodation. From my experience of staying with OYO, it has delivered on most counts. The rooms were clean and were a good value for money. The availability is already fairly good in large cities and is getting better by the day.

A quick online search for OYO revealed mixed reviews that included many happy customers and a similar number of dissatisfied customers. Most dissatisfaction seems to appear at the level of securing bookings, finding the hotels or in checking in. Many reviewers seem to agree on the value-for-money proposition. There are indeed some glitches that need to be fixed, like the ones I mentioned from my experience. Being a startup that has very rapidly expanded, I would expect to see some problems and issues cropping along the way, which may get fixed over time.

In a country where quality and cleanliness is difficult to ascertain with budget hotels, I would be keen to lookup OYO rooms whenever I need a budget hotel room. OYO rooms can be a to-go option for budget rooms as long as they remain consistent with quality and provide value for money.

The big question would be whether they can sustain with their prices and deliver the same quality in the long run. If they can, I think they have a potential to be a budget traveller’s favourite choice.

Note: My stay at OYO Premium Connaught Place was facilitated by OYO for this story.

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