Interview: OYO Rooms CEO on Reinventing Hotel Distribution
Photo Credit: Ritesh Agarwal is the 22-year-old founder of India's OYO Rooms. OYO Rooms
Skift Take
OYO Rooms founder believes that the future of travel is brands becoming their own distributors, which is, of course, every brand's dream. It may turn out to be true for super brands in isolated cases but it would be a very fragmented and unsatisfying user experience. There is a lot of convergence going on but the mammoth online travel agency sector isn't checking out anytime soon.
Founded in 2013 and flush with $126 million in funding, OYO Rooms has taken the notoriously haphazard budget hotel sector in India and built the country's largest branded hotel network by implementing standards for everything from air-conditioning to the thread count of sheets.
Ritesh Agarwal, OYO Rooms' 22-year-old founder and CEO, talks about Uber a lot and feels a kinship with some of the disruptive aspects of the on-demand ride service. There are several parallels he sees between the two companies but Agarwal especially admires how Uber has largely become its own distributor through the Uber app.
"Today the brands and distributors are fighting with each other, but in the next five or 10 years, companies are going to be created that are going to be Internet-first and also brands," Agarwal tells Skift.
"... Hopefully, in the next five or 10 years, there'll be many more products across the travel segment, hotels, airlines etc. where the distributors and the brands are the sam
