Oyo, AirBnB, EaseMyTrip & Yatra join hands to revive pandemic hit travel industry

Softbank-backed hospitality firm Oyo along with online travel agencies such as Yatra, AirBnB and EaseMyTrip have launched an association to investigate the issues faced by small hotel owners and promote new formats of tourism in the country trying to recover from the setback of the pandemic.

The association will help small and medium hotels and homeowners across India to adopt technology to revive their pandemic-hit businesses. It also plans to promote new formats of tourism.

Christened Confederation of Hospitality Technology and Tourism Industry (CHATT), the industry body will help small and medium hotels and homeowners across India to adopt technology in order to revive their businesses.

Stressing upon the need for a one-country one-tourism policy, Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and chief executive of Yatra, said that the last 12-14 months were awfully bad for the hospitality industry.

Amanpreet Bajaj, general manager AirBnb, India Southeast Asia, HongKong and Taiwan, said that the sector had always believed in the power of authentic travel and this association can help micro entrepreneurs in villages bring their businesses online, "so that sustainable tourism can also take centre stage."

Interestingly, this comes at a time when online hospitality firms such as Oyo are facing huge criticism from offline hoteliers citing predatory pricing and unethical business practices.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has also admitted a plea for corporate insolvency proceedings against a subsidiary of Oyo following a complaint from a Gurgaon-based hotelier.

Now, even as the two parties have reached an out-of-court settlement, dozens of other hotel owners have also submitted their claims against the company.