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After disrupting the budget category, Ritesh Agarwal’s hospitality start-up OYO is now opening keys to a more premium stay with OYO Townhouse. Targeted at Millennials the trendy looking OYO Townhouse which will have hyper-local addresses is re-engineering the concept of hospitality.
“OYO Townhouse is 25 per cent hotel, 25 per cent home, 25 per cent shops and 25 per cent café,” says Agarwal, founder and CEO OYO, describing how this “urban innovation” will be a hybrid experience with an indoor lounge and an outdoor cafeteria. OYO Townhouses, he says, will show up in the most unexpected locations, mostly non-commercial residential areas where neighbours will get dependent cards to use the hotel facilities.
Targeted at ‘millennial-minded’ customers, Townhouse will offer Netflix in the rooms, smart multi-purpose spaces, and a bundle of other interesting offerings, including creative menus.
The first look of OYO Townhouse reveals a youthful, contemporary space with edgy black and white sketches in a quaint retro style. Delhi-based Motherland, co-founded by V Sunil and Mohit Dhar Jayal, the duo who had earlier brought in American ad agency Wieden+Kennedy to India, has crafted the consumer experience at OYO Townhouse. “What we are doing at OYO Townhouse is similar to the work we did with Indigo Airlines,” says V Sunil. Wieden+Kenndy was the agency that came up with those unique retro hairdos of stewardesses and concepts such as Airwiches that made Indigo stand out from the clutter.
Motherland is also going to curate the shopping experience at OYO Townhouse with T-shirts, eatables, purses, books and memorabilia carefully sourced from here and there.
The first OYO Townhouse opened in Gurgaon in December, while the second one is opening in South Delhi’s residential Safdarjung Enclave end of this month. The company is looking at 250 Townhouses spread across 12 cities within this calendar year. Rooms at OYO Townhouses will start at a price point of ₹3,500 with two categories —X and SuperX.
Barely three years old, OYO has nearly 70,000 rooms across 200 cities, making it one of India’s largest hotel chains. OYO Townhouse is an attempt to move up the ladder and expand the customer base. As Agarwal says the evolution for OYO is to move up from a “standardised” experience that OYO Rooms offered to a “loved” experience.
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