OYO Hotels, the technology-led hotel company, has seen an uptick in bookings for UK properties following the government reopening announcement on Monday 22 February.
Tuesday 23 February saw a 100% increase in bookings for OYO’s hotels, which rose by a further 20% on Wednesday 24 February. June leads the way in the highest number of forward bookings, closely followed by May, indicating a customer appetite to travel sooner rather than later.
Of the top 15 most popular destinations for stays from May to September, London takes the top spot with over a quarter of all bookings.
The coast is also a popular choice with half of the destinations being beachside resorts including Newquay, Brighton, Bournemouth, Isle of Wight, Eastbourne and Tenby. Popular tourist cities such as Bath, Chichester and Coventry also feature in the ‘Top 15’ most booked destinations.
The average length of stay for this year’s hotel bookings currently presents as shorter than 2020, with an average stay of 2.6 nights in 2021 compared to 3.4 nights in 2020, indicating a desire for shorter getaways.
The second May bank holiday weekend (29 to 31 May), which follows the hospitality sector’s reopening on 17 May, has also seen strong bookings, jumping by 50% from the previous weekend. This time larger cities dominate the most popular destinations, with London leading the way, joined by Cardiff, Newcastle and Liverpool in the top ten.
“We are delighted to see the immediate impact on consumer confidence of the clarity provided by the roadmap,” commented Rishabh Gupta, Head of OYO Hotels Europe UK.
“The pent-up demand is clear to see from the booking patterns we’ve seen this week which show people are keen to travel again as soon as they can.
“Throughout the pandemic OYO Hotels has pivoted to innovative ways of keeping our hotels open, from public sector partnerships to accommodation for essential workers, and has maintained occupancy levels over 10% above the industry average in 2020,”
Gupta continued, “2021 is sure to be a bumper year for domestic travel and with over 200 hotels across the UK we’re looking forward to opening up to all our OYO customers once again.”
To give customers complete peace of mind when booking this year, OYO has implemented a fully flexible booking policy whereby all bookings cancelled before 9am on the check-in date are 100% refundable. This is across all hotels and applicable to all forward bookings for all future dates.
Founded in 2013, OYO launched in the UK in late 2018. OYO now has more than 200 independently-owned hotels under its brand, ranging from country manor houses and traditional inns to B&Bs and aparthotels, covering all four territories of the United Kingdom. Globally, OYO has more than 43,000 hotels in 80 countries and 800 cities around the world.
