Online hospitality major Oyo Hotels and Homes has signed a strategic global distribution partnership with Bedbank Hotelbeds to give Oyo access to more than 60,000 travel buying intermediaries around the world that use the Hotelbeds platform, including tour operators, airline websites, points redemption programs, loyalty plans, and MICE operators from more than 140 source markets.
This marks Oyo’s first partnership with a bedbank company.
As a result of this Hotelbeds’ clients will have access to Oyo’s portfolio of more than 18,000 franchised and leased hotels and over 10,000 homes and villas, across ten countries – including India, China, Malaysia, Nepal, the UK, UAE, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and now Japan.
Through this partnership, Oyo Hotels & Homes, will be able to distribute its hotel rooms via both the wholesale channel, which operates under the ‘Hotelbeds’ name and the retail travel agent channel, which operates under the ‘Bedsonline’ brand – all united under one contract.
“At OYO, our mission is to create a perfect space in every place by ensuring the best possible experience for our guests, and having Hotelbeds as a strategic global partner supports this vision. Hotelbeds distribution channel of B2B travel buyers helps us access new customer segments and geographies. The bedbank company’s cost-efficient distribution channel makes them an ideal partner to achieve our goal,” Maninder Gulati, Chief Strategy Officer, Oyo Hotels & Homes said in a statement.
In October last year, Hotelbeds announced the consolidation of all its brands in the wholesale channel —GTA, Tourico Holidays and Hotelbeds— under the name of Hotelbeds, phasing out the Tourico Holidays and GTA brands. With this, Hotelbeds Group and its wholesale brand are now simply known as 'Hotelbeds'.
Speaking on the partnership with Oyo, Mark Redmond, Head of Global Chains at Hotelbeds said, “Oyo Hotels & Homes is one of the most talked about hotel brands currently and is massively shaking up the entire sector, posing a challenge to much bigger incumbents. So, we at Hotelbeds are very pleased to be the first travel distributor given the privilege to work with them. As the largest budget hotel chain, it represents a new offering for our 60,000 plus travel buying clients using our platform, such as travel agents and tour operators – meaning our distribution channel sits perfectly with their needs. Whilst they currently have an impressive 515,000 rooms, they’re set to increase up to 1 million by the end of the year and we’re looking forward to helping them find incremental and higher-yielding bookings for many of those rooms”.
More recently, in early February, Hotelbeds also announced that now 90% of its current 180,000 hotel partners now have access to all of the 60,000 travel buying intermediaries – such as tour operators and travel agents – that use the company’s platform, following the integration of GTA and Tourico Holidays into the company recently.