As a sign that business travel in India is rapidly rebounding, we have added more than 1,250 corporates since March 2022. The recovery is led by small and medium enterprises, traditional business houses & conglomerates, startups, travel management companies as well as film production houses which have emerged as a key customer category for us in recent times.
The list of top cities searched and booked by corporates include Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Pune and Delhi. Small and medium businesses continue to contribute significantly to the business travel bookings as more and more people from this segment opt for physical interactions; still a key factor for them to expand their business.
Our Business Accelerator division has serviced over 6,600 corporate clients since January 2021.
While any customer can easily book a room on OYO through our app or website, customers with corporate tie ups get curated stays options, strong personalised customer support and integration with their accounting system.
Domestic corporate travel is one of our important focus areas, but intermittent disruptions since the pandemic had led to subdued or inconsistent booking patterns. Our recent focus on mid to premium segment brand categories Townhouse Oak, Townhouse, 5 by OYO and 4 by OYO has also provided companies quality stay choices.
Commenting on the growth in corporate travel, Ankit Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, OYO, India said “The appetite for business travel has returned strongly since the frequent change in travel restrictions has ebbed, making travel planning for business trips more certain and predictable.. For a lot of our corporate customers, conducting business over virtual meetings was a stop gap and sub-optimal solution. Such customers are leading the business travel revival. Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions are the other key use cases fueling the growth of business travel”.
We have also engaged with more than 2,800 offline travel agents since January 2021.
Customers choose our platform for many reasons, including unique inventory and availability of storefronts, quality of accommodation, the price of our offerings, ease of use of our app, personalization, the trust and safety of the OYO platform and the quality of its customer support through Yo! Chat, end-to-end proprietary customer support platform.
Segments beyond corporate travel are also on a steady rise for OYO. The company crossed the 8 lakh bookings milestone in India during the Easter week. It has seen 8 continuous weeks of rising bookings since then. OYO Europe Homes has also seen a faster recovery from the Omicron impact.