Hospitality firm Oyo is aggressively putting in place a digital record system to facilitate direct data sharing of customers' arrivals and departures with various state governments as well as law enforcement authorities. The company claims to be a pioneer in such a digitisation drive in the country and the platform will not only help individual states monitor visitor movement but will also reduce the possibility of manipulating the hotel register, as in the case of manual entries, The Business Standard reported.
"At this point, we have seen acceptance from the governments of Haryana, Rajasthan and Telangana of our proposed digitisation of guest entry and departure records," the daily quoted Ghosh as saying. OYO extended an offer for the above to the West Bengal government, too, on Monday.
Moreover, the company has already put in place a digital register in Jaipur and pilot projects are running in the other two states that have come on board. According to Ghosh, the digital arrival and departure register aims to provide a real-time update to the respective governments on who's checking in and checking out, making this "a more efficient and transparent process" compared to the manual version.
Meanwhile, Oyo is also gunning for a new accolade - becoming the world's largest hotel chain. "We will have one million rooms inventory into our fold in the near distant future. I think, it should happen in a year and a half," Aditya Ghosh, the CEO of India and South Asia, told PTI, adding that this will help OYO to become the "world's top player from number three now".
The company's existing count stands at around 460,000 rooms and it hopes to scale up to 2.5 million by 2023, according to founder Ritesh Agarwal. That's not a pipe dream given that OYO is adding over 64,000 rooms every month globally. The chain has an active presence in seven countries, including Malaysia, UAE and the UK, and is planning to expand to at least 15 countries, with a focus on Asian nations.
The buzz is that in the first quarter of this fiscal, OYO had added a total of 47,000 rooms in China against 34,000 in India, signalling a higher growth rate in the new market. A company official told PTI that the company currently boasts an inventory of about 180,000 rooms in China against over 164,000 rooms in its home market, however the revenue from across the border is comparatively lower.
Over the next few weeks, OYO is expected to announce a fresh corporate growth plan focused on Asia and Japan, where it aims to become the largest player by the 2020 Summer Olympics. The company is reportedly in talks with property owners for agreements in Japan and with this move it hopes to tap the anticipated growth in the country's hospitality sector over the next two years.
Edited by Sushmita Choudhury