OYO partners with China’s Meituan

Bengaluru: Hospitality chain OYO has entered a strategic partnership with China’s Meituan, an ecommerce platform for a host of services, as the former looks to expand its presence in China. As part of this partnership, OYO will list 8,000 of its standardized accommodations on Meituan Hotels platform.

This move will combine OYO Jiudian, its Chinese subsidiary’s operations with Meituan’s open ecosystem, user base and traffic, thereby enabling easy access for Meituan’s users to Oyo’s properties around the country.

“OYO Jiudian is fulfilling aspirations of millions of travellers by transforming the hospitality landscape and ensuring that great hospitality experiences are not only for the rich, but for everyone,” said Sam Shih, COO of OYO China.

This development comes just days after there was news about potential layoffs in OYO’s China office. Two Chinese media outlets reported on Monday that OYO had sacked an undisclosed number of employees at OYO Jiudian. The media outlet, 'Pandaily', said Oyo planned to lay off about 1,000 employees from its Chinese development team.

The company, however, denied any such claims.

OYO, which forayed into China over a year ago, is now present across 337 cities in the country, including Hangzhou, Xian, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and Kunming, among others, with 500,000 rooms.