OYO unveils Data Science Insights in Asia’s India Debut

Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO of OYO, India’s branded network of hotels unveiled the OYO Red Map at Tech in Asia’s first India conference held in Bangalore. Hailed as the country’s first international tech conference, Tech in Asia Bangalore seeks to bring fresh insights into the world of tech and startups. Partnering these efforts, OYO shared its data science insights at this platform.

Speaking at the conference, Ritesh said, “At OYO, we are relentlessly focused on delivering a superior customer experience – from search, to booking and on-stay. In the recent past, we have made a conscious thrust towards building data science capabilities to enhance our offerings. Our data scientists use natural curiosity and innovative tools to derive deep insights into customer behavior. These insights not only help us improve our service but also take effective business decisions.”

OYO is now using both qualitative and quantitative data science research to study consumer behavior to effectively cater to the varying needs of today’s travelers. Ritesh shared, “We record more than 750,000 bookings every month. As one of the exploration exercises, our data science team plotted the normalised geo-locations of our booking sources. When they rendered the locations of approximately 2 million bookings on a blank chart, a complete map of India emerged. We probed the data further in order to better understand our customers, changing travel-behaviors and the various interventions that impact their decisions and choices.”

Some of the insights thrown up through this exercise:

• Solid lines between cities overlapped with key highways and road-routes, implying that more and more hotel bookings are happening during transit, and between 4-6 hours prior to check-in. Indeed, 28 percent of travellers book an OYO upon reaching their destination-city.
•  On-demand ushering in a travel revolution: Similar to on-demand cabs, the “available, predictable, affordable” promise of OYO has resulted in unprecedented demand capture, with an OYO being booked every 3 seconds.
• Feeder cities: Top cities for OYO are invariably surrounded by a cluster network of feeder cities that drive demand. This also helps OYO identify growth areas and new markets where more supply can be created or unlocked.

OYO is the pioneer in the Indian hospitality industry with innovative technological innovations and disruptive business model. It’s network consists of over 65000 rooms across 7000 hotels in India.