India’s largest hotel network OYO has now made an entry into the fragmented marriages and wedding space business in the country with the help of its separate website called Auto Party.
The Auto Party website enables the customers to make use of banqueting and wedding planning services provided by the company. Now, the company is planning to provide united services such as banqueting space, catering services and decoration as well as devoted event planners for the customers integrated under the OYO mobile application.
“We were doing a lot of word of mouth MICE events in our hotels and a lot of people used to come to us and ask for bigger spaces for hosting events like marriages. In the existing banquets, the entire experience for customers was very much broken. The banquets were not providing other facilities,” said Ankit Tandon, COO of OYO townhouse.
Tandon stated that the idea popped up from a lot of MICE inquiries that OYO was getting for its operated properties. The Oyo Auto Party was first introduced in April and is at present available in eight cities that include Delhi/NCR, Jaipur, Lucknow and Kolkata. The company is expected to reach 100 venues by the end of this year in these cities from the current 50.
“We have introduced these at a very affordable price point. This has opened up the ability of the common man to get his children married at a place where he could not have thought of going to earlier. This will enable us to go into lower ticket size weddings. The market opportunity is increasing,” said Tandon.
Oyo is planning to provide these services to the current eight cities only this year, and further, it might plan to expand to other areas as well. The COO says that these cities are a very active wedding market and it intends to go deeper in these regions first, and then plan expansion accordingly.
The banquets and marriage halls on Oyo Auto Party are the ones it has exclusively partnered with. Customers can also get a video walk-through of these venues along with estimates of the food and decor costs. Food tasting can be arranged as well at home through the Oyo Auto Party website. With this move, OYO is sure to gain more and more from its existing and new venture.