OYO said on Wednesday that it will invest €300 million ($334 million) in its rental vacation home business in Europe. The company said that it will focus on ‘increasing substantial capital and human resource investments’ to expand its vacations rental business in Europe.
OYO rebranded @Leisure Group (an Amsterdam-based business it acquired from Axel Springer for $415 million) into OYO Vacation Homes four months ago after the acquisition. The company aims at developing the largest vacation rental management service business in Europe, managed under OYO Home, Belvilla, Danland, and DanCenter brands with the investment.
“We are focusing on enhancing our customer proposition to not just families but new-age millennials and young executives, traveling for business or leisure, including consumers from newer geographies who travel to Europe from across the world including US, Asia, China, and the Middle East,” said Tobias Wann, CEO, OYO Vacation Homes, said in a press release.
“With a goal of becoming the largest vacation rentals business, OYO Vacation Homes will continue to make significant investments in resourcing and manpower towards growing its existing footprint in the market,” Wann added.
The company will be investing in house amenities (such as air conditioners, appliances) and property enhancements (such as swimming pools, sauna). Further, it will be introducing some major booking updates on its Belvilla website and high-quality cleaning services that exist in the Netherlands will be deployed to other European countries too.
“Globally, vacation rentals represent a massive multi-trillion opportunity, the largest of which is in Europe,” said Maninder Gulati, Global Head, OYO Vacation and Urban Homes. “With Europe spearheading the vacation and urban home rental trend globally, OYO Vacations Homes is uniquely positioned to capitalize on its experience and insights aided with OYO’s proven approach towards building the world’s largest global vacation rentals business.”
OYO which is the world’s third-largest chain of hotels and living spaces has connections with over 23,000 hotels and 125,000 vacation homes, with over 1 million rooms, globally. OYO has reported that its vacations rental business has grown twice since the acquisition of @Leisure Group with over 2.8 billion holidaymakers using its service to book vacation homes.
OYO is backed by investors such as Airbnb, DiDi, Softbank’s Vision Fund, Grab and Sequoia Capital India among others. The company has raised $1.7 billion in twelve funding rounds with the latest round in April this year.
