OYO Hotels and Homes continues to build up its business travel segment with the recent addition of a booking service for corporates booking their own trips.
While the India-based company grabs most attention for its funding news ($1 billion in September last year, for example) and expansion (Dubai, via its homes concept), the business travel arm OYO B is growing.
Anil Goel, the company’s chief technology officer, says OYO B caters for the young professional workforce in India, which makes up the majority.
Introduced in mid-2016, the idea was to make booking on OYO easy for corporate travelers as well as in line with corporate travel policies.
Goel says corporates were offered the ability to set a budget for each employee, while a "Corporate Mode" was launched on the OYO app.
He claims that since launch, more than 7,000 companies are using the service every month and that OYO B has reaped up to 40% in average savings in travel costs for companies.
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In the early days, Goel claims, demand from business travelers was for its “standardized and curated offerings,” so with OYO’s presence across 230 large and secondary cities across India, it now provides a wide and growing accommodation base.
The company has introduced different categories - OYO Townhouse, SilverKey and OYO Living - to further appeal to the business travel audience.
Most recently it launched OYO B Direct, which is an extension to OYO B, aimed at small- to medium-size business and independent business travelers. Part of the service is to simplify the Goods and Services Tax process for independent business travelers.
Goel says that going forward the company plans to introduce OYO B beyond India to parts of world where OYO is present.