OYO Hotels & Homes, who claim to be south Asia’s biggest and the world’s fastest-growing chain of leased and franchised hotels, homes & living spaces, has announced the launch of OYO Home in Dubai. Starting with 40 homes in the city, the hospitality chain plans to ramp up the footprint to 200 homes in the next six months. It also plans to introduce the category to other emirates in the UAE.
OYO Home is a Home Management service that utilizes the chain’s existing on-ground operations, hospitality technology, housekeeping skills, revenue management algorithms and distribution prowess to deliver a hassle-free solution to second home-owners. It intends to focus on locked and unused homes across top holiday destinations in the country. The expansion comes after OYO Home has established itself as one of the most-preferred accommodation choices among discerning travellers in India looking for unique experiences. OYO currently operates over 3,000 fully-managed residential accommodations in India dotted across 25 cities, including Goa, Shimla, Puducherry, Coorg, Manali, Dehradun, Wayanad, Coorg, Udaipur and Jaipur among others.
Commenting on the launch, Kavikrut, Chief Growth Officer, OYO Hotels & Homes, said, “At OYO, we are focused on solving the problem of lack of quality and supply-demand imbalance in the hospitality sector. Since launching OYO Home in India, we’ve seen exponential growth and currently operate 3,000+ homes in the country. We’ve introduced unique accommodation experiences to travellers ranging from historic villas dating back to 1900s to theme-based apartments and are now ready to extend OYO Home to Dubai.”
“UAE’s top holiday destinations have a sizeable number of homes that are locked and unutilized. Homeowners are unable to put these assets to personal or commercial use due to lack of time and-or expertise in homestay-management. We saw this as an untapped opportunity where our business has existing synergies - we have people resources all across the UAE, strong capabilities when it comes to property onboarding, transformation & upgradations, including redesign to suit the needs of young global travellers, hospitality-operations, revenue management, and distribution network - both online and offline, through both OYO’s own and partner channels. Travellers trust our brand and we are already known for pioneering effective solutions tailored to the traveller’s needs, and OYO Home is designed to do exactly that,” he added.
Elaborating on the concept, Kavikrut said, “What we are attempting with OYO Home guarantees a unique experience for our guests and higher yields for homeowners. There is significant market opportunity especially as people have invested in second homes in top holiday destinations across the UAE. GCC and international travellers today are open to choosing the comforts of a fully managed holiday home, for short stays. Home owners in Dubai have enthusiastically welcomed OYO’s new foray and opened up their homes to this opportunity, and we are already seeing a lot of interest amidst our patrons too.’’
Last year, OYO Hotels & Homes welcomed over 100,000 guests from 75 countries across 16 properties in UAE, since its launch in October 2018. With this lease and full inventory control model, OYO currently manages 1,300 rooms within these properties in Dubai, Sharjah, Ras Al-Khaimah and Fujairah and is set to touch 12,000 rooms by 2020.
Sakshi Jain, a homeowner from Dubai, shared her thoughts, "My 1-BHK apartment in Dubai Marina was given to OYO Hotels and Homes for managing and they have done very well as far as maintaining the property goes and the revenues, have seen better yields than a normal yearly rental till now and I am so happy with OYO."