Business

India's 25-year-old hotel billionaire eyes a US expansion

January 16, 2020 8:50 am

The company already has 200 US locations, but Agarwal wants more. In August, OYO bought the 657-room Hooters Casino Hotel in Nevada, which he has already rebranded as the OYO Hotel & Casino Las Vegas.

The Hooters Hotel purchase isn’t normally how OYO does business, though. In its large portfolio of hotels worldwide, only two locations are company-owned. The rest are franchised or they are locations where OYO leases the hotel from the owner.

Its hotel partners become “affiliates” who retain ownership of the hotel while OYO provides management, branding, uniform service experience and guarantees a higher occupancy rate.

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OYO charges the affiliates a fee for these services — typically a percentage of the hotel’s gross margin — and also charges a separate fee for its partners to be listed on its online network of listings.

Each hotel has the OYO logo boldly splashed on the outside. Room rates across its markets range between $15 to $150 per night, with $30 being the average global room rate.