Leading chain of hotels and homes OYO strengthening its presence in Southeast Asia today announced foray in Vietnam beginning with over 90 franchised hotels in six cities including Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang, Phu Quoc, Vang Tau and Nha Trang.

The company also committed over $50 million investment in Vietnam and is aiming to create more than 1,500 direct and indirect jobs in the country, OYO said in a statement adding that it is looking to expand operations in the country to 10 cities by the end of 2020.

With 10 cities, OYO is eyeing “20,000 rooms by 2020-end,” said Dushyant Dwibedy, Country Head, OYO even as the company has enabled “over 300,000 job opportunities in South Asia,” he added.

“It is important to see how OYO has aggressively expanded into almost every vertical in hospitality space including homes, regular hotels, coworking, co-living, student accommodation, resorts, etc.. You cannot walk a street in this country without bumping into an OYO. So it is tapping into the bulk opportunity that exits. OYO is today in a position where it could potentially buy out a hospitality company to add more strength,” Navneet Nagpal, Principal Consultant and Founder at hospitality consulting firm Spectra Hospitality had told Financial Express Online.

OYO, which launched operations in another Southeast Asian country — Indonesia in October last year, has grown to nearly 20,000 rooms in 720 hotels across its 80 cities. Other countries in the region — Malaysia and Philippines also reported having 8,000 and 1,300 ‘exclusive rooms’ respectively.

The company has another set of 300 hotels to be on-boarded OYO like in the next two months in Indonesia where it has more than 900 employees and “more than 18,000 customers that stay in OYO each night in Indonesia,” said Rishabh Gupta, Country Head – OYO Indonesia adding that $100 million has already been committed for growth in the country along with the aim to expand to over 100 cities by the end of 2019.

OYO has been growing at a breakneck pace to become the world’s largest hotel chain by 2023 from currently being the fifth largest with over 23,000 hotels and 46,000 vacation homes across over 800 cities in 80 countries including the US, the UK and Europe. 

Earlier this year, OYO had announced Rs 1400 crore investment in India & South Asia business. In India, OYO has more than 1.76 lakh rooms in 9,000 hotels in over 260 cities.

OYO has also grown significantly in the residential real estate market with the acquisition of Amsterdam-based vacation rental company @Leisure Group in May this year that manages holiday homes, apartments, and holiday parks. Other acquisitions made by OYO has been co-working startup Innov8 and smaller Chinese rival Qianyu etc.

“OYO has grown significantly through multiple acquisitions via the inorganic route right from the beginning to expand into different categories even as their initial model was an aggregation of hotels,” hospitality consultancy firm Hotelivate Managing Partner Achin Khanna had told Financial Express Online.