On 30th November 2015, I landed at Mumbai T2 Airport, around 12pm. This was not a special visit, in fact it was a very regular trip to Mumbai, until OYO Rooms made it special.
I travel to Mumbai (from Bangalore) on a very regular basis for my work (Am with a FinTech Startup). It was surely a new experience for my first time travel with Vistara Airlines (the inflight food was sad, but that’s a story for another time) and for me landing first time at T2, it sure is an awesome airport.
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| Sai Garden |
I reached OYO Rooms, Andheri, next to Western Expressway Metro Station (Sai Garden) at around 12:45pm and I was looking forward to freshening up and a good lunch at the OYO ‘premium’ stay – I had made the booking around 4 days back and paid up, I was even given a discount (using Paytm wallet). But the wait would get much, much longer and I had no clue of what was coming.
The manager at the reception told me that they have stopped taking bookings from OYO and its been a while since they did that!
‘But I have a confirmed booking’, I said, with astonishment. He said, ‘call them and they will explain what is going on, as we do not take bookings from OYO and rightly so, your booking is not showing up’.
Bravo!!
Bravo!!
This started a long ordeal of phone calls, emails and tweets. After being on hold with the customer support executives of OYO, I was told that you can go to another Premium property of OYO which is ‘premium’ and they have confirmed that your booking is indeed ‘confirmed’. The person on the call also told me that its a nearby place and would not take more than 10 minutes for me to reach. FYI – The customer support sits in NCR, Delhi and no idea about Mumbai traffic. Frustrated, hungry and irritated I was. Thanks to the Sai Garden manager, he allowed me to sit there for a while and take all calls. I started tweeting OYO from that time itself.
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| S Suites |
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| 2nd floor of S suites, OYO Premium |
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| 2nd floor, in front of my OYO Premium room |
I left for the new hotel where I was told to shift and I reached there (S Suites, OYO Premium, Sakinaka, Mumbai) in around 20 minutes. In between the OYO support team had already emailed me stating how sorry they are to hear about my experience and would see how best they can keep me cool and calm. It took a while for the S Suites manager to get the booking details on their tab and then I was given a room on the 2nd floor.
Well, what is your expectation from a premium hotel? I had basic expectations – a clean room, toilet rolls, lights in bathroom(!) well, I even called up the room service to check if they will get more lights in the bathroom, they came and told me that itna hi hai (I guess they meant – itne paise main itna hi milega), just when I was about to settle in, I opened the room to call for a boy whom I could hear outside (for food order), I realised there were two big garbage bins kept next to my room and there is an adjacent stairway which is littered with garbage. And this is a ‘premium’ property!
I spoke to a customer service representative of OYO (Rahul) who felt sorry for me and suggested I shift to a different OYO property! Yes, they did say that. Yes, a 2nd shift to a 3rd property. So I checked out and shifted to the 3rd one (Tulip Residency), since this new hotel was only 100 meters away I had to walk to it. I am in Mumbai for 15 days hence I walked to this new property with my bags. In that hot sun. Mind you, I still have not had my lunch and I have missed my first meeting which was at 2pm, its already 2:30pm now.
I get into Tulip, got a room on the 4th floor, this again is a OYO premium property. The room’s phone was not working, there was no toilet roll, the AC was bang next to the bed where you would place your head while sleeping. And no prizes for guessing, there was nothing premium in this OYO premium. FYI – There is a garbage dumbing area right in front of this hotel and kids also do potty right in front. Premium!
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| Tulip |
I had no more patience for shifting again, I realised its not their fault, its my fault to think of premium as an out of the world offering, may be OYO thinks this IS premium and I either take it or get lost. Since I had to go to Pune for a day, I had booked OYO only for 2 nights, thinking I will book another one when am back (since its so convenient, thru their app). Thank god for that decision.
I finished my meetings for the day and came back, ate something and slept off. The food was OK. The night before I was to check out, I got a call from the hotel reception requesting me to shift to another OYO property as there was an over lapped booking done at OYO! Well, I guess OYO is all over the place now, in goofing up! Of course I did not shift anywhere, I was anyways checking out in the morning (and never coming back to OYO) with 2 nights stay.
The experience left me questing 2 of my beliefs,
- Help a StartUp do good business and
- Trust the word ‘Premium’.
This is a no brainer that I will not be booking any more with OYO. I am a frequent traveller (my work takes me places) and I will now rely totally on word or mouth, booking.com or ibibo.com.
I have booked via booking.com multiple times and I have never faced such an issue. I booked rooms at Elite Suites in Pune using ibibo.com once this month and I got the best deal for this amazingly premium hotel. Point to be noted, ibibo never claimed it to be premium property though it indeed was!
To be fair to OYO, I have stayed with OYO before and it was not that bad. Their locations are always far off remote places though. From the day I went thru this ordeal I realised daily someone or the other is complaining about OYO’s goof ups. Isn’t it the right time that they stop looking forward for expansions (they are even thinking of taking over ZO Rooms, their competition in this business) and look back and fix issues (and their image along with it)? This sounds a no brainer to me.
I have been with a start up for 7 years and I genuinely feel for startups. I want these companies to make their name in the global map but with no basics in places it will only become a matter of joke and a case study in MBA courses.
I have been with a start up for 7 years and I genuinely feel for startups. I want these companies to make their name in the global map but with no basics in places it will only become a matter of joke and a case study in MBA courses.
OYO, pull your socks up. Now!