 "Oyo plans to re-engage with unhappy users")
Keen to reconnect with aggrieved users, the top management at OYO Rooms will personally reach out and re-invite them to stay with OYO properties. OYO is the largest aggregator of hotel rooms in India operating through a network of 5,500 hotels in 170 Indian cities.
“We have made a 17-member leadership team at OYO, where each member has been given a mandate to reach out to certain number of customers. We want to apprise the customers of the measures we have taken recently and ask them to give us another opportunity to serve. We will look at incentivising their stay,” Ritesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive officer, told Business Standard.
“We have made a 17-member leadership team at OYO, where each member has been given a mandate to reach out to certain number of customers. We want to apprise the customers of the measures we have taken recently and ask them to give us another opportunity to serve. We will look at incentivising their stay,” Ritesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive officer, told Business Standard.
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Founded in 2013, OYO has quickly grown to become the largest operator of its kind with an inventory of around 63,000 hotel rooms. It has touched the million-mark in terms of check-ins during the past year. However, in the course of its rapid growth, the company faced several cases of customer complaints. Hundreds of posts by users on the company’s Facebook page talked of negative experiences. “We saw a surge in customer complaints around end-2015. Our TripAdvisor rating came down. That concerned us. We analysed the cases and found that 51 critical hotels in high-occupancy areas were delivering a bad experience,” said Agarwal.
OYO Rooms acted against the 51 hotels by de-listing them from their network. Another 123 hotels from where cases of complaints had come were put on a one-month notice during which they were not allowed to take fresh OYO bookings but only serve the earlier bookings. “Based on their performance and service, we are allowing them to resume bookings. We now have stricter clauses for them. If more than a couple of bad experience come from a hotel, we will take them off our network,” Agarwal added.
OYO is also trying to incentivise hotels to improve service through the OYO Star Programme, where top-performing hotels will be offered additional advantages such as prominent displays on the OYO booking platform and opportunities to be a part of every innovation of the firm.
OYO said its average TripAdvisor rating had fallen to 3.9-4 by end-2015 from a peak of 4.4. It said the rating has again reached 4.4 on a scale of 5. “As we continue to grow, we are seeing customer experience get better,” said Agarwal.
The start-up claims to enjoy 40 per cent repeat customers, a high number in the hospitality business. Agarwal said he intends to scale up the repeat bookings to 50 per cent.
