Thomas Cook India has entered into a partnership with OYO Rooms to offer leisure and business travellers a standardised stay experience at strategic locations at a wide range of price points. A standardised stay for a customer includes basic amenities like - air-conditioned rooms, complimentary breakfast, and wi-fi with the round the clock customer support.
While Thomas Cook calls itself an integrated travel and travel related financial services company offering services like leisure travel, corporate travel, foreign exchange among many others, OYO Rooms claims to be India's largest branded network of hotels. OYO Rooms offers stays in over 140 cities in the country with all the above mentioned amenities.
Abraham Alapatt, chief innovation officer at Thomas Cook said with this partnership the company hopes to bridge the gap which exists in terms of demand and supply when it comes to quality 3-star hotels.
The tie-up is primarily with a focus on the middle-class, which Thomas Cook expects will grow exponentially over the next few years.
While big 5-star hotels either sell directly or through agents like Thomas Cook, there is a short supply of 3-star hotels, which Thomas Cook hopes to fill in with the tie-up.
"Massive growth in the Indian middle class will create a demand in good quality travel and accommodation. Data shows the Indian middle class is expected to grow from 8.8 million households in 2015 to 43.6 million in 2025. The partnership gives us a platform to tap this," Mr Alapatt said.
The tie-up with OYO Rooms gives the customers much greater inventory which is very reasonably priced to choose from, he said.
The numbers will be driven be volumes, and margins won't be very high, Thomas Cook said. With the growth of the middle class, the volumes will automatically swell, it said.
On the business traveller front, Thomas Cook is betting big on corporates and the small and medium enterprise (SME) traveller to add to the volumes.
On Tuesday, the Thomas Cook stock rose 2 per cent to Rs 210, in the morning trade, outperforming the broader Nifty and the Sensex which were trading flat.
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