Budget Hotels – Dutch Uncles

Here’s How Hotels Can Manage Revenue During The Pandemic

Aakash Sharma — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 05:35:08 +0000

Hotels and the ancillaries of the hospitality industry are coming out of the pandemic disruption with many new changes and challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, almost the entire hotel industry in India went under as they recorded near-zero occupancy for an extended period, a situation never faced before.

Despite many adaptive measures, the challenge remains – how can hotels get the best out of their rental and regular infrastructure? What new ways of selling rooms should the industry players implement to be successful in the future?

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With challenges like unsold rooms, staff maintenance, property management, and many others, hotels have become creative with their offers and packages.

Here, we delve into some perspective answers to these fundamental questions.

Revenue Optimisation

Revenue and sales optimisation is the strategic management of price, inventory, demand and sales channels to maximise long-term sales growth. By leveraging the latest auxiliary technology trends that are driving hotel revenue into the new era, hotel businesses need to focus on the challenges and opportunities that directly impact guests and the commercial hotel industry.

These include forecasting, budgeting, performance measurement, inventory and channel management, sales and event management, revenue management systems, booking engines and decision-making tools.

Creativity in generating hospitality revenue

Hotels all around the globe are forced to rethink revenue generation during the COVID crisis fundamentally. Like so often, many successful concepts have started with putting the guest at the centre and looking at what they want, not what it is that is sold traditionally, like a room night with breakfast. What guests need today is a quiet space to work, an escape from everyday life, and simply a real experience COVID recedes.

Create co-working spaces

Numerous hotel businesses are transforming their traditional spaces. Following the trend, hospitality entrepreneurs can create work-from-hotel spaces for out-of-towners, digital nomads and local business people who do not wish to be restrained by office contracts. They can also create weekly and monthly packages for such customers, including WiFi, coffee, bottled water, snacks and catered lunch.

Utilising unused professional spaces

The corporate group and netting’s markets are ramping up at a slower pace than leisure and travel. Hoteliers can utilise new conference and function spaces to offer extracurricular activities such as yoga classes, wellness programs, cooking classes, book readings, author signing events, neighbourhood craft shows, etc.

Technology adoption and adaptation

Businesses of all sorts have gone online, including hospitality and travel industry players. To succeed in a post-pandemic world, hospitality enterprises must make sure to adopt digital models and educate their staff about the same.

From giving accessible booking services, on-the-call assistance, website detailing, application for different services, and many more, a wide range of customers can be attracted to a new set of hospitality businesses‘ functioning.

The post Here’s How Hotels Can Manage Revenue During The Pandemic appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Hospitality Unicorn Supports Small Hotel Partners With ‘Samarthan by OYO’

Anju Nambiar — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 10:35:13 +0000

Frontline workers, volunteer organisations and everyone who joined the Covid fight during the second wave worked tirelessly to supply oxygen to critical covid victims. Without pausing to think about the dangers to their own life and their family, they joined the first response for Covid emergencies. OYO’s hotel partners and homeowners actively participated in the fight by providing quarantine, self-isolation and accommodation requirements. Unfortunately, a lot of hotel partners succumbed to the virus and lost their lives leaving behind children without financial backing and mentorship, spouses and families who had lost their support system. Samarthan by OYO is designed for them.

What is Samarthan by OYO?

Samarthan, which translates to ‘Support’ in the Hindi language is a Covid-19 Hotel Partner Bereavement Support programme for patrons by OYO, the hospitality unicorn. Through this programme, OYO is extending welfare benefits for the families of their small hotel partner community.

It is mainly aimed at offering support for families and immediate kin of Covid-19 victims who died during the first and second wave of the pandemic. Wellness benefits like financial aid, waivers, and education funding are being provided to help them grieve their loved ones and find solace in knowing that they can fall back on the employer until they recover from the loss.

Beneficiaries of the programme

The main beneficiaries of Samarthan by OYO are the company’s hotel partners, and their community of homeowners also dubbed as ‘OYOpreneurs’ registered with OYO. The families of these beneficiaries are covered in this bereavement programme including their spouse, children and other eligible relatives supported by the programme.

Wellness benefits and Bereavement support for kin of deceased hotel partners and homeowners

Bereavement support

Families of deceased beneficiaries obtain bereavement support including a three-month commission of take-rate support for the OYO property. This amount will be transferred to the deceased partner’s OYO Secure wallet, a digital wallet provided exclusively for partners. Additionally, families will receive waivers on pending dues for said property registered with the company.

Wellness Benefits

Children of the deceased (below 2 years of age) will receive funding on their education for a period of 5 years. The spouse and children (below 1 year of age) will receive medical coverage amounting to INR 5 Lakh up to 3 years from the time of death of the hotel or homeowner partner. Eligible relatives and family of the deceased beneficiary will receive mentorship and internship opportunities.

The VaccinAid initiative

VaccinAid was an earlier initiative by OYO for its hotel partners and staff. It was launched to get the entire staff of their hotel chains fully vaccinated. As part of this initiative, OYO organised vaccination camps across multiple cities in India. Fully vaccinated hotel partners and support staff under this initiative received the ‘VaccinAid’ tag.

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Children of the deceased (below 2 years of age) of the hotel partner will receive funding on their education for a period of 5 years.

What’s in it for me?

Start-ups in India have led the fight against Covid. Their partners, staff, customers, have assisted the company in extending Covid help. Start-ups like Ola (delivery of oxygen cylinder by partner drivers) and Paytm (covid helpdesk by local Kirana shop partners) have seen immense contribution by partners. If your company also relies on partners for running business operations, or if they are assisting you in the Covid fight, enrolling them in a welfare benefit programme is an appropriate acknowledgement for their efforts.

If you have not already organised vaccination drives for your staff, it’s high time to ensure that every worker and support staff who is a part of your business is fully vaccinated. Health and education assurance for children and families of staff is the biggest concern among the workforce currently. By taking the responsibility for the same, your partners and support staff can breathe a sigh of relief and dedicate themselves fully towards your business. Provide covid-19 insurance, organise vaccination camps and ensure you are there to support your staff and families before and after any unfortunate deaths or hospitalisation.

Small businesses impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic are on the verge of or are already shutting down. It’s important that after the death of the owner or the founder, the business carries on to support his/her kin. Business shouldn’t get impacted due to Covid death since it will put additional burden on the devastated families.

The staff and workers of the hospitality sector are at high risk during the pandemic for two reasons:

Lack of job and income guarantee
The fear of contracting covid

Due to their vulnerability, wellness and bereavement support programmes are highly necessary for start-ups and small businesses. Be connected with the families and loved ones of your staff and partners if you are a hospitality start-up. If the sector needs to successfully revive, this sense of community and social responsibility is the need of the hour.

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What are the New Products and Services in Travel and Hospitality?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 08:35:04 +0000

It has been a year since the camera in the closet is waiting to capture new photos. The dust has settled on the luggage bags. The passport is waiting to get stamped again. With travel restrictions announced, wedding banquet halls booking and business conferences cancelled, 2020 has caused severe jolts to the travel and hospitality industry due to covid-19.

The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism and Hospitality (FAITH), has estimated the industry’s losses for FY21 to ₹15 trillion because of the pandemic, which is a threefold increase from ₹5 trillion loss estimated in March.

Although vaccination drives are on, and the apprehensions of travelling in the pandemic are gradually easing amongst people, the industry is yet to pull its socks to revive and reach the growth momentum of pre-covid levels. The pandemic has altered consumer behaviour, which has given birth to new traveller expectations. The expectations will be based on –

Safety: both perception and reality will matter
Health: Government will introduce mandatory checks
Hygiene game to be strong.
Those brands will be considered winners who will not compromise on delivering quality.
Value for money: Travel and hospitality businesses should not find this to be an opportunity to charge exorbitantly, thus the new mantra to be good value for good money.

The travel and hospitality industry to stay afloat in such grim times need to up their game by bringing innovations in their product and services.

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The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism and Hospitality (FAITH), has estimated the industry’s losses for FY21 to ₹15 trillion because of the pandemic, which is a threefold increase from ₹5 trillion loss estimated in March.

Implementing Speech analytics in Travel and hospitality

The travel and hospitality industry is people intrinsic, thus poor customer service will cause blunders here. Few customer complaints handled poorly will shift the customer loyalty in no time. Thus, the implementation of speech analytics in aviation and hospitality will aid in determining the customer demands and expectations from customer care representatives and set benchmarks of best customer handling practices. The speech analytics tool records the conversation, analyses the words, phrases, and tones used by both customer and customer care to generate better insights. The tool reduces the average handle time, which increases productivity and customer satisfaction.

Redefining business travels and work from home

Where work-from-home model guarantees comfort within the home environment, but the interference of daily house chores at times interrupts the working. Therefore, hotels can redefine themselves to be ‘collaborative hotels’ for the remote working employees who come for business travels. Hotels can provide quiet and peaceful workplaces for remote teams to work solo. Such hotels will be located near worker’s homes.

The subscription model in Travel and Hospitality

The subscription model in hospitality is not new, but hotels and travel companies can design subscription models based on the number of monthly travels that a particular job role requires. For instance- a job role like sales professionals, medical representatives, travel writers, etc. requires extensive travelling. Hotels can offer a subscription-based model that will charge a one-time fee in which the employee can make a particular number of visits and stays monthly or quarterly. Hotels and travel companies in collaboration with the corporates can come up with an attractive stay and travel subscription model plans.

Data-driven analytics and recommending better

Travel systems generate a ton of data. Leveraging the travel data by predictive analytics helps businesses to create services based on consumer insights and expectations. A smart data strategy allows to understand the demographics of new travellers and their choice of price points that will help travel and hospitality business to design loyalty packages, budget accommodation, shared-ride facilities, offer gluten-free room menus to customers following a diet, promoting honeymoon packages to those recently engaged or budget flight options for college students. It strengthens the recommendation game, for instance, a budget traveller looking for cheap flights is likely to book economical hotel stays, with analytics businesses can understand behaviour and recommend relevant products and services, which will drive sales and increase revenue.

New Travel Packages

Since, international holidays and country trips have taken a backseat, the work from home model has made life mundane. Travel companies can utilise this monotony of life, to create new holiday packages based on experiences or hobbies which people have long forgotten like going to cycling hikes, fishing, sailing, walking tours, nature villages, road trips, near city travelling, etc.

What is there for the travel and hospitality startups?

The use of technology and people experiences will help the digital-first travel and hospitality chains or startups to remain resilient in such dark times. Startups operating in this sector need to infuse flexibility in every decision so that you can prepare for the challenges ahead to understand a customer well and bring new services and packages to increase revenue.

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Oyo Rooms: A Brand Every Traveller Needs

DU Desk — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 04:35:03 +0000

At some point or the other, you would have had the desire to just be a tourist, to cut loose and go on a mini-budget vacation across the country. Speaking more to the context of the average Indian citizen, this is easier said than done when you consider the severe lack of infrastructure for the budget traveller. India is a country of two extremes, where on the one hand you have a grand scale of comfort and luxury and live like the one per cent at a hilariously over-expensive price or you stay in a pigeon-hole if you are on a budget. This conundrum is what led the then 18-year-old Ritesh Agarwal to look for a solution, which just so happened to present itself in the brand we have all become familiar with over the years, Oyo Rooms.

The Genesis Of Oyo Rooms

More than a never-before-thought idea, the concept of Oyo Rooms was a solution to a problem. From all his time spent travelling during his college days, Ritesh saw a severe gap in the market for the budget traveller. A gap which took the form of a lack of affordable and good-quality hotels in the unbranded budget hotel sector.

Oyo Rooms was conceived with a very specific goal in mind, to close the gap between the high-end hotels and a limited budget to give the average citizen the best of both worlds. The venture started with Ritesh pioneering a listings and bookings platform for high-quality budget accommodations in 2012 called ‘Oravel Stays’. This was somewhat of a precursor to the now Oyo franchise.

After months of trial and error, it was evident that just providing a means of discovery was not going to bridge that gap. Armed with this new information, the business was pivoted into what we know as Oyo Rooms today.

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Oyo Rooms brought forth a new age for the travel and hotel industries by bridging the gap between comfort and budget.

The Growth Oyo Rooms Has Seen

What started as a small-scale venture, blossomed into a multi-billion-dollar unicorn. With the backing of around 23 different investors over a period of eight years and a valuation which at its peak stood at $10 billion (according to The Hurun Global Unicorn Report 2020), with $3.2 billion raised in the funding rounds alone, the Indian brand has catapulted itself into the international game. Now Oyo Rooms is the largest branded chain of budget lodges, homes, hotels and rooms in the Asian-Pacific region as it maintains a strong foothold in major countries such as India, China, Malaysia, The United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, The Philippines, Nepal, UAE (United Arab Emirates), Indonesia and even Japan.

Under the Oyo Rooms brand umbrella, there are over 43,000 plus listings currently active globally in over 80 different countries and an additional 150,000 vacation homes as well. The main reason for Oyo’s rapid expansion is its multi-headed approach in providing a wide range of accommodation to its customer base. The brand offers many products under its purview that vary in levels of luxury and price.

What Makes Oyo Rooms Standout?

At the core of all these sub-categories, however, the most important thing that makes Oyo the king of the industry is standardisation. Regardless of the changing desires of the ever-shifting customer base that is relative to the world of travel, tourism and budget lodgings, Oyo Rooms has maintained a primary focus on the needs of the budget traveller. This is where the standardisation makes the brand stand out. While budget travellers are given a range of options and locations to choose from, they also get value for money. That is to say, every budget room, hotel or motel has to adhere to a set of parameters or guidelines to qualify for the Oyo brand umbrella. These parameters stipulate that there is a basic number of amenities that these lodgings must carry, which include fully functioning WIFI, Air Conditioning, Cable Television, hygienic and well-maintained linens and bed-spreads (especially crucial in the days following the pandemic), hygienic washrooms and a complimentary breakfast.

Whether the client chooses to opt for a room with all or just some of the amenities is up to them as it is entirely dependent on their budget and preferred level of comfort. Hotel owners have displayed a tendency to go the extra mile and invest in this endeavour as this level of standardisation ensures customer satisfaction, which puts their business ahead of the local, non-branded competitors. As a bonus, Oyo rooms delivers on its promise in a consistent manner, which boosts brand confidence further. Since Oyo does not have any physical item or product to speak of, the brand experience and standardisation stands as the product.

Having said that, although Oyo started and maintains the core of its brand as a budget hotel franchise, this brand-is-product strategy has allowed the company to venture into the mid-range budget as well as luxury-stay territory. With expansion not standing as a barrier, Oyo has successfully migrated its expansion efforts into multiple product lines. Let us have a look at some of the main ones:

Oyo Rooms (Also Known as Oyo Hotels)

These are the earlier mentioned budget hotels and motels that offer travellers and tourists the basic amenities such as WIFI, clean rooms, hygienic bathrooms, air conditioning and so on. This branch of products exists all throughout the different countries that Oyo is active in as a baseline of sorts. The unique selling proposition of this line is, as mentioned above, the standardisation across all hotels that are registered under Oyo Rooms to provide customers with that on-brand experience wherever they go.

Oyo Townhouse

These are your mid-range budget hotels and are the brand’s take on a lifestyle hotel. It has gained a lot of popularity with veteran hoteliers as well as new business owners as a way to attract a younger crowd. This branch was specifically structured to attract the millennial crowd as every element of the hotel is geared towards the comfort factor that the millennial crowd has come to expect. Everything from the 24-hours service menu to the sleek and contemporary space, to the booking process, has been streamlined.

SilverKey

SilverKey is synonymous with corporate travel life as this line is oriented for the business traveller. Launched in April of 2018 it is only available in India and as per Oyo’s official blog site, the company plans to undertake an expansion that will see an addition of 8000 plus rooms and 400 properties in around 19 different cities across the country.

SilverKey provides executive-stay accommodations in hotels and rooms that are located in major business hubs and come furnished with spacious rooms, upscale interiors, meals, gym, and dining areas in terms of basic amenities. Additionally, this line of hotels also come equipped with lounging areas and conference rooms along with a complimentary insurance under Acko. Currently, this line of product is active in Gurgaon, Delhi, Noida, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Trivandrum, and Kolkata.

Capital O

This branch of lodgings is geared towards the high-end customer and can be categorised as a luxury package. Oyo launched this line of luxury rooms in June of 2018 with the target customer being mainly business travellers as Oyo was trying to capture the hearts and minds of the corporate sector. With that said, this line caters to a healthy mix of both business and leisure travellers. This product is also the second-largest line under the brand that operates internationally, after the primary Oyo Rooms that is.

Given how large and full of potential the international business traveller segment is, it only makes sense that the brand went in this direction. This line is very prevalent in India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America specifically.

Collection O

This was the latest iteration of the previous ‘Capital O’ franchise and serves the same function in catering to the corporate traveller. There is no clear distinction between this and the previous version other than the fact that it is only available in India at the moment. Oyo is, however, planning an expansion of this line in Mexico and Indonesia somewhere down the line.

Oyo Homes

This is Oyo’s take on the staycation-oriented traveller. Launched in September 2017, this line was one of Oyo’s first takes on short-term rental spaces, quite similar to its competitors at the time like Airbnb. Private homes can be rented for brief staycations and are only available in India, Indonesia and UAE at the moment.

Oyo Vacation Homes

Primarily focused across the European countries this line of lodgings is less of a sub-category under the Oyo umbrella and more of a stand-alone franchise that really delves into Oyo’s International expansion. Through this, tourists the world over are given the opportunity to rent out vacation homes in Europe.

Oyo Vacation Homes also runs a listings platform as per the founder’s initial vision under the brand ‘Traum-Ferienwohnungen’, which is a subsidiary of Oyo. This brand carries its own share of around 80,000 plus property listings.

Oyo Life

Now, this is a deviation from the common theme of short-term rentals that Oyo has thus far maintained. This line of lodgings is targeted at millennials and young working professionals who are looking for a long-term renting option with end-to-end management. Currently, this product line is active in India and Japan and given Japan’s significant home rental market, the innovative approach to hotel bookings and the host of themed hotels they maintain, this might prove a fruitful venture.

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Thanks to Oyo's diverse range of hotel lines and its brand management, the Oyo brand has been catapulted into international waters and is dominating the industry.

How Oyo Is Ruling The Industry

It is quite evident why Oyo as a brand and as a product stands above the rest. Yes, it was relatively new to the game and had to compete with international brands like Airbnb, but it had an advantage.

Where Airbnb originated for an American customer demographic, Oyo was designed with Indian travellers in mind. Add to that the fact that India has such a large population and a vast gap in the market for budget hotels that do not meet expectations and you have a winning recipe. The concept of bringing existing hotels and upgrading them to fit the brand image was a brilliant move that ensures customer satisfaction and enables the brand to exponentially expand, which is exactly what Oyo has done.

Ritesh Agarwal, a graduate from the Indian School of Business and Finance, rightly saw a great opportunity in the Indian budget-hotel arena and seized it. What he came up with was more than just a franchising model that succeeded beyond everyone’s expectations. It was rather a democratisation of the traveller’s lifestyle that made it possible for almost anyone, from business moguls to young thrill-seeking college kids, the ability to travel and actually be able to afford a stay at a comfortable and quality-ensured hotel without breaking the bank.

Now, Oyo Rooms is a brand known the world over, with multiple styles of franchised lodgings, a wide spectrum of services, and a good range of price points, all of which are made accessible through one convenient app and a click of the button.

For more inspiring stories like this, do check out our Inspire section!

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