Budget hotel aggregator OYO Rooms has expanded its Townhouse service to Hyderabad. Unlike OYO Rooms, ‘Townhouses’ are entirely operated by OYO, giving the company more control over its operations. This is the fifth Townhouse from Oyo, since it introduced them in in January this year. The other four hotels in the portfolio are located in Delhi-NCR. The rooms are priced Rs 2500 and upwards. In a statement, Oyo said that it plans to launch 25 Townhouse hotels in Telangana, and expand to 60 Townhouse hotels across 7 cities in Southern India by end of 2017; The Hyderabad property is in Jubilee Hills, and Oyo plans to add properties in Banjara Hills, Hitech City, Gachibowli and Panjagutta areas of Hyderabad as well. Essentially, apart from being an aggregator, Oyo is also becoming a hotel chain. The company says Townhouse addresses the mid segment premium product category. All in all, operating and aggregating combined, Oyo has over 70,000 rooms in 200 cities in India, Malaysia and Nepal (where it recently launched operations). Note that OYO’s competition Stayzilla shut down operations in February this year, which Airbnb has expanded operations. Oyo also competes (for booking stays) with the likes of Booking.com, Hotels.com, Yatra, MakeMyTrip-GoIbibo, GoIbibo, Tripvillas, among others. Regulation The hotel aggregation space is currently unregulated in IndiaIndia is currently working on guidelines for accommodation aggregators, which Oyo will be impacted by, along with entities such as MakeMyTrip, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Yatra, MakeMyTrip-Goibibo and Tripvillas. Funding According to unconfirmed reports in the Times of…
