Hotelbeds & Oyo Hotels & Homes Announce Strategic Distribution Partnership

Oyo will be able to distribute its hotel rooms via the wholesale channel, which operates under the name Hotelbeds name and the retail travel agent channel called Bedsonline. Spain's Bedbank Hotelbeds and Oyo Hotels & Homes announced a strategic global distribution partnership on in April 2019. Oyo said the preferred agreement represents Oyo's first-ever distribution partnership with a bedbank. The partnership provides Oyo with access to more than 60,000 travel buying intermediaries around the world that use the Hotelbeds platform, including tour operators, airline websites, points redemption programs, loyalty plans, and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) operators from more than 140 source markets.

This alliance will allow Hotelbeds' clients to have access to Oyo's portfolio of 18,000 plus franchised and leased hotels as also to 10,000 homes and villas, across ten countries, including India, China, Malaysia, Nepal, the UK, UAE, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and now Japan.

Oyo Hotels & Homes said it will be able to distribute its hotel rooms via both the wholesale channel, which operates under the 'Hotelbeds' name and the retail travel agent channel, which operates under the "bedsonline" brand - all united under one contract.

Mark Redmond, head of global chains at Hotelbeds said: "Oyo Hotels & Homes is one of the most talked about hotel brands currently and is massively shaking up the entire sector, posing a challenge to much bigger incumbents. So, we at Hotelbeds are very pleased to be the first travel distributor given the privilege to work with them. As the largest budget hotel chain, it represents a new offering for our 60,000 plus travel buying clients using our platform, such as travel agents and tour operators - meaning our distribution channel sits perfectly with their needs. Whilst they currently have an impressive 515,000 rooms, they're set to increase up to 1 million by the end of the year and we're looking forward to helping them find incremental and higher-yielding bookings for many of those rooms"

Maninder Gulati, chief strategy office, OYO Hotels & Homes, stated," at Oyo, our mission is to create perfect space in every place by ensuring the best possible experience for our guests, and having Hotelbeds as a strategic global partner supports this vision. Hotelbeds distribution channel of B2B travel buyers helps us access new customer segments and geographies. The bedbank company's cost-efficient distribution channel makes them an ideal partner to achieve our goal."

A global-first, OYO Hotels brings a unique equilibrium between demand and supply gap of quality living spaces through proprietary technology, efficient operations, staff training, civil transformation, inventory management, revenue management, and customer relationship manager. All these facets come together to improve a hotel's performance by delivering a quality-assured experience. Subsequently, hoteliers can take advantage of the technology to boost occupancy and deliver enhanced customer experience.

October last year, Hotelbeds announced the consolidation of all of its brands in the wholesale channel, GTA, Tourico Holidays and Hotelbeds under the name of Hotelbeds, phasing out the Tourico Holidays and GTA brands. With this, Hotelbeds Group and its wholesale brand are now simply known as 'Hotelbeds'.

More recently, in early February, Hotelbeds also announced that now 90% of its current 180,000 hotel partners now have access to all of the 60,000 travel buying intermediaries - such as tour operators and travel agents - that use the company's platform, following the integration of GTA and Tourico Holidays into the company recently.

Question:

How the strategic distribution alliance between OYO and Hotelbeds is a significant step in building life time value for present and prospective customer globally. Discuss