I was traveling to Odisha(Orissa) in October 2015 with my family. Its been long time since I visited Odisha, so didn’t have any clues about accommodation or local travel arrangements.
While train tickets were confirmed, I had not booked any hotels till the last minute. I started panicking because my wife and young children were also traveling with me, and I couldn’t take chances with accommodation etc.
Someone suggested to book hotels through Oyo Rooms. When I checked on the internet, I saw many people posting negative feedback, so I was a little skeptical. Other websites were offering very expensive rooms and I wasn’t sure how those hotels would turn out to be. Finally, at the last moment, I decided to take a chance and book rooms through Oyo in Bhubaneswar and Puri.
Oyo works on a different model. They don’t have their own hotels. They have reserved some rooms in various hotels in different cities and have customized(or standardized) those rooms. For example - comfortable bed, air-conditioning, free breakfast and wi-fi, and one free toiletries bag. The problem with Oyo website is that they don’t specify which hotel user is actually booking until the user books the room.
I talked to the Oyo customer care and asked them to send quotations for 2-3 options from each city(Bhubaneswar and Puri) and specify actual hotel name. I don’t know whether I was an exception, but Oyo did send me actual hotel names. Then I did some internet search and figured out 1 good hotel each in Bhubaneswar and Puri, suitable for my need(triple occupancy and within my budget). Then I called up Oyo and demanded some discount on the rates quoted by them. Again, they obliged me and offered 15% on one and 20% on another hotel rates. I booked the room and kept praying that it turned out to be good.
When we reached Bhubaneswar, it was very late in evening and fortunately the hotel booked through Oyo was next to Railway Station. When we checked into the room, it was really nice, clean, and airconditioned(its very hot in Odisha during October also). The staff was very courteous. In the morning, they offered simple but free breakfast as part of the package. When I checked with the manager, he showed me rate card of the hotel where room rates were around 25% more expensive than quoted by Oyo.
In the same hotel, we were also helped by Hotel Manager to negotiate a good deal with a taxi driver to do some sightseeing and then reach Puri. Again, the experience was very good.
In Puri, the Oyo booked hotel was very near to Jagannath temple(around 300 meters). When we checked in, we were pleasantly surprised to see very clean hotel, a very large room, a very modern bath, and comfortable beds. Here also, the hotel provided all the things promised as part of package(breakfast, wifi, etc.) For this hotel also, Oyo had provided us rates that were around 15% cheaper than hotel’s own rates.
In all, we had a very good trip to Odisha.
Some tips while booking rooms through Oyo -
1) Talk to customer care or email them(once you email them, they will usually call you if you have provided phone number)
2) Ask them to provide quotations for 2-3 hotels and ask them to disclose "actual names" of hotels(website simply says "Oyo XYZ" where XYZ is locality)
3) Do some research using actual names provided by Oyo. That will help you shortlist the hotels
4) At the time of booking the room(do it over phone or email), ask them about any discounts. In many cases, they give 10-20% discounts
5) Get the booking confirmation mail from Oyo because that contains the rate
6) Opt for making payments at the hotel. I realized that hotel managements are not keen on payments being routed through Oyo(they may be having their own reasons)