'Underdogs stealing the show': OYO's Ritesh Agarwal reveals most booked hill stations this New Year

Ritesh Agarwal, founder and group CEO of OYO Rooms, on Tuesday night revealed the most booked hill stations for New Year 2025 celebrations. As per the OYO Rooms founder, the locations that are often considered as underdogs saw a rise in bookings this New Year. 

So which locations saw a rise in bookings for New Year celebrations?

As per Agarwal: "Dehradun & Srinagar (Srinagar is now a 365 day destination) becomes the most booked hill station, but the underdogs are stealing the show! Coorg's has witnessed a 28x surge this New Year and Mussoorie, the surprise contendor, isn't far behind with a 10x rise in bookings (sic)." 

In another post, he mentioned that not only hill stations, spiritual locations were also popular among travellers this New Year.

He said that while Shirdi saw a mammoth rise of 940 per cent in its bookings, Ajmer saw a surge of 761 per cent in its bookings this New Year.

Ritesh Agarwal, who was also seen on Shark Tank India, further noted: "Banaras (Varanasi) becomes the most popular spiritual travel destination with 12,841 bookings this NY with Ayodhya being the new entrant to top charts this year."

Citing booking trends, Agarwal stated that Ayodhya is likely to be the top spiritual travel destination in January in the run up to the Pran Pratishtha anniversary. 

Moreover, Agarwal said that over 10 lakh people used OYO Rooms across the world on New Year's Eve, a 58 per cent increase from 2023. He also mentioned that over 4.70 lakh people are on the OYO platforms, while adding there was a 41 per cent spike in the website's traffic at 2 am. 

“Our users are certified night owls: There was a 41% spike in traffic at 2am!”

Apart from this, OYO reported a net profit of around ₹132 crore for Q1FY25, a massive turnaround from the ₹108 crore loss reported in the same period last fiscal year.

Recently, OYO announced the acquisition of G6 Hospitality, a US-based lodging franchisor and parent company of the Motel 6 and Studio 6 brands, from Blackstone.