Adi Narayan wrote an article called “A New App Wants to Make Hotels a Hit in India.” Instead of attending university to get a degree, a young Indian man, Ritesh Agarwal, created an app called Oyo Rooms. The primary message is the app gives a customer a brief description of the hotel’s living environment, so it can help the customer choose which hotel best fits their needs.
Due to the large population in India, and its tourism sector, hotels are big business in India. Agarwal decided to create Oyo Rooms, a mobile application, to solve a major issue; the standards of quality of Indian hotels were often subpar. Oyo Rooms is an app that gives a brief description of the hotel for the consumer and tells them the positives and/or negatives of booking a room there. He got investors and the app started to become a success. Hotels started to generate profit, because people could find out about the hotels on the app, versus taking a gamble by booking a random hotel room.
An investor name Peter Thai, co-founder of PayPal, has invested in college dropouts who are looking to start new companies. Thai invested in Oyo Rooms so the app can be developed and become an everyday name in India. The customer has a choice of which room to stay in, and pick what suits them the best. The app has allowed Indians and tourists to feel more comfortable when planning to book a hotel room. India has a big market for hotels and this app was the perfect solution to ensure the standards of quality of Indian hotels. According to the article, India’s lodging market is worth $7.2 billion!
One of the interesting features of the app is that customers can negotiate the prices of hotel rooms they wish to stay in. This app makes a great recognition of not just making the hotel environment a better place, but now customers are going and asking to haggle the price a bit. This is a benefit for the consumer market, because now a lot of people that travel to India can so on a budget. It will help many families in India as well, because of the huge population of lower and middle-class families there. This also benefits hotel companies, as they can garner more consumers if they are willing to lower the price a bit.
The significance of this app is that it creates revenue for Indian hotels, while ensuring quality standards for guests. People are becoming more comfortable when booking a hotel in India, because they know exactly what the room will have. Also, this app can benefit many people from other countries that stay in India for business or tourism. This is an asset for India’s tourism industry, which is often not visited due to its third world status and negative stigma held among those living in developed countries.