Oyo Rooms have been the sweet poison past many years not only destroying the livelyhood of lakhs of hard working travel agents, but also indirectly devaluing the book value of the hotels they tie up with. And their go-to trick is -just like how you lure a kid with a toffee, they would lure a traveler with a cheap rate, get them hooked and booked, take bulk bookings in advance at half the market rates in what is termed as an unfair trade practice.
Oyo rooms who have received an investment of over 10,000 crores through various investors invest their money on hotels, buy the room nights in bulk & rebrand it as an Oyo hotel and sell the same resort inventory at half or sometimes even less than half the rates. The room which in reality costs for an example-Rs 2000 per night, they would sell it at Rs 800 or 1000 to capture the market unethically not only stealing a honest travel agent’s business but also devaluing the book value and image of the hotel/resort.
In the end it’s the loss for everybody, being a rebranded hotel/resort, obviously you don’t receive the expected services which they claim. On an Indian Hospitality survey conducted by IFBC-every 3rd customer booking on Oyo for the 1st time has not repeated their hotel room booking again with them. The only reason being that there have been multiple complaints in terms of what they claim to give and what they actually give to the end consumer.
Well that was for the Guests, the owners of the resort bare maximum losses which not many owners in India are able to understand.
- The rooms which resort owners used to sell at an ethical fair market rates to the guests are now being sold at dirt cheap rates. This activity invites a wrong category of customer base to that particular resort/property. For example earlier only people from good families or corporates or a decent earners would be visiting your resort/property, but since your rooms are sold at half the rates, even the mannerless, tapori and rogue crowd have started visiting it as it’s quite affordable for anyone to enter the resort premises at those rates which leads to multiple scenarios, fights, crimes, payment issues and service issues inside the property.
- Also Oyo collects payments well in advance but paying to hotels well delayed?
- Every customer who books through OYO gets lots of issues at the time of check in. Simply because OYO does not provide proper booking details to the hotels, which only troubles the guest and then shifting to other hotels which definitely guest has not booked. (spoils the image of the resort because of them)
- The image of the resort/hotel goes for a toss, when a guest buys your room for just 800 or 1000Rs wherein the real market rate is 1500 to 2000, the end consumer may end up thinking that it maybe a cheap resort or a resort with not much to boast about (tabhi toh itna sasto hoga! That’s what a guest thinks for your OYO property) obviously anyone would think like that. This in long term would decrease the shelf life of a resort as the image of the property is put at stake.
EXAMPLE-Imagine if a road vendor selling Onions at just Rs 5 a kg just to attract all the consumers (though he himself bought the onions at Rs 10 a kg and other vendors are selling it at 15 Rs a kg), atleast for once you will think why is he selling at such cheap rates? There must be some defect or they maybe of some inferior quality. At the same time that roadside vendor is doing an unfair trade practice by kicking the stomach of ethical hard working traders who are selling their products at the right price by capturing their daily customers) This is exactly what Oyo Rooms have been doing to thousands of resorts in the last few years which the owners have failed to realize in the blanket of money Oyo would offer them.
Oyo have been investing and buying nights of hundreds of resorts, selling them at half the rates online which has killed the business of thousands of physical travel agents, which has hampered the image of resort owners, which has devalued the property and reduced the shelf life of the resort, which has made consumers feel that physical travel agents are cheating on them by quoting the right price which they feel is a higher price because of Oyo. What’s more Oyo has been in the center of controversies with them putting cameras inside the rooms, not giving adequate service to the guests, taking multiple advance bookings for the same inventory where in many a times guests have remained stranded after reaching the resort.
In a brave move by one of the famous resort chain owners in Goa, Gingertree Group of Hotels who have state of the art resorts in Candolim, Baga and Anjuna sooner or later realized how they are silently killing and spoiling the hospitality market not only in Goa but across India cancelled their contract on immediate basis with Oyo Rooms midway to ensure that the guest satisfaction and market ethics are taken care of.
In 2018, Indian High Court had already banned many travel booking websites for the same reasons of unfair trade practices and it’s just a matter of time before Oyo also shuts down in the next 3 to 5 years wiping out the hard earned money of their investors. Also the brave decision by the Gingertree owner has aroused lots of appreciation from Travel Agents who have backed the owner for full support and a thriving ethical business ahead. Also please don’t believe on any negative reviews of Gingertree Resorts or any resorts which have ended ties with Oyo which you find online, it was because of Oyo’s many dissatisfied guests.
Article Inputs and updates recieved by
Goabookers.com-The no.1 hotel bookings and stay packages website for Goa in India)
Gingertree Resort Images-
