British tourism sector looks resilient despite Brexit concerns: OYO Founder

THE UK tourism sector is very resilient to the prevailing Brexit uncertainties when there has been a discussion about how Brexit would impact British businesses, an Indian hotel company boss said.

Ritesh Agarwal, 25, founder of OYO Rooms was quoted by the Telegraph: “The Brexit discussions were there around the time we opened our first hotel here in the UK. So far we've seen that tourism has been quite strong both within the country and from outside.”

The latest comments came after Agarwal raised his own stake in the firm last week with a $2 billion buyback of shares from two present investors who will continue to back the hotel firm.

The move is expected to double OYO’s market capitalisation.

Agarwal said he never experienced wavering in the British tourism sector after it listed 100^th hotel in the UK in July. OYO had seen occupancy rates over 85 per cent around the country.

The Softbank-backed hotel company is planning to invest £40 million in Britain this year.

OYO Rooms was founded six years ago. It started its operations in the UK last year as part of a rapid global expansion strategy.

The Indian origin founded business claims to have had success in Manchester, Edinburgh, Blackpool, and London after it entered into the UK market.

Today, OYO Rooms has its presence in over 800 cities globally.

OYO functions as a franchise model in which it partners with independent hotels, allowing available rooms to be listed on an application.

The company doesn’t build or own hotels. It approaches the independent hotel owners and offers to invest to improve their business. Thus, the hotels are re-branded as OYO Rooms.

OYO is responsible to upgrade, reshape, and alter the hotel rooms to improve the facilities in a bid to attract more customers and ultimately improve the hotel business significantly.

At present, OYO is working on an ambitious $300m business expansion in the US.