OYO’s Quest To Unseat Marriott As The World’s Largest Hotel Company, Plans To Add A Million Rooms By 2023

OYO Rooms, India’s largest hospitality company, has revealed plans to add over a million rooms spread across the globe in the next three to four years, Business Standard has reported.

The hotel rooms aggregator, recently raised $1 billion from investors, with a total valuation of $5 billion. This valuation is higher than those of established hotel brands in India like India Hotels, which owns the Taj Group of Hotels and EIH, which also runs the Oberoi.

However, the startup aims to lead the global hotel industry with its aggressive expansion plans. “We aspire to be the world’s largest hotel company built out of Asia with markets in India and China. Currently, Marriott is the largest and we have a lot of respect for the company. We aspire to be bigger than that. We have already built in the growth rate at which they have been growing in the past couple of years to set our target for 2023,” OYO’s founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ritesh Agarwal said.

The company has also lined up a $600 million investment in China. However, due to opaque regulatory processes, the company has had to rely on offline bookings instead of its websites and apps. OYO is looking to expand in the lucrative tourism markets of West Asia, South-East Asia and parts of Europe.