Oyo Acquires Direct Booker for Rs. 40 Crores
The Croatia-based company is one of the top performing ‘Airbnb alternatives’ and runs a partner network of apartments and villas to handle bookings.

It has been a few quiet months for Oyo Rooms but now they are back in the headlines with a bang. The company came to announce that they have acquired Direct Booker for $5.5 million USD or Rs. 40 crores. Direct Booker is a company based in Europe is a vacation rental booking platform. You can find individual flats and apartments, hostels, hotel rooms and suites and even villas on their website.

The 11-year-old company with over 1 million total bookings is solely based in Eastern Europe as they offer over 5000 places to stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Albania.

The company plans to expand across the continent of Europe, especially Croatia as they have identified that country for great growth potential. Oyo Rooms currently has close to 2000 places of stay on their Belvilla platform and well over 7100 on their Traum Ferienwohnungen platform. Oyo takes care of the operations of these two platforms for their European market and now with the acquisition of Direct Booker, they can have a strong footing in the Eastern European market as well.

The company sees Europe as the place to conquer now and they have already found success in countries like Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark and Austria.

Oyo recently, hit the headlines in European news companies as they opened up their accommodation in Poland for Ukrainian refugees free of cost. The company took care of all administrative expenses and booking costs to provide a place to stay for them which made its rounds across social media and people praised the company’s decision to do so.

The Global Chief Officer of Oyo said that homes continue to be the paramount selling point and tangent for the company. With their top-class algorithms, competitive pricing strategies and operating systems, the company has been able to stay profitable and grow steadily. They added close to 1,50,000 places to stay over the past year in all the countries they operate in.

He went to say that with their technology and their partner’s expertise in the area and local markets, they can synergize and have a very fruitful partnership and he believes that they can take over the Croatian market and cement their place at the top.

Over the past two years, Oyo Room’s business slumped due to coronavirus and people around the world forced to stay at home. However, as people phase into the real world now, Oyo has come out all guns blazing and is looking to take over the travel and hospitality field.