OYO focuses on its contactless check-in service in new spot

Eight months into the COVID pandemic, things have now slowly started opening up. With the lifting of travel restrictions, travellers have also started heading out to (mostly) drivable locations for quick weekend getaways.

As India began taking its first steps towards normalcy, OYO Hotels & Homes rolled out ‘Contactless Check-in’, an initiative to enable guests with a faster and safer check-in experience. To spread the word on this initiative, a 360-degree campaign featuring actor Sonu Sood, OYO’s asset owner and brand ambassador, has been launched.

The hospitality industry is a ‘high-touch’ one, full of greetings, gestures and human connections. For OYO, the insight for ‘Contactless Check-in’ stemmed from this very reality. Considering the risks associated with physical contact in today’s world, OYO worked on eliminating processes and going digital.

The leading hotel chain mapped the entire customer journey - right from the moment guests walk through the door and check into their room. In a press release, OYO mentions that through this exercise, it realised that the check-in process, in particular, was long and full of exchanges, including ID verification, handing over of keys, or plain old chit-chat.

With OYO’s ‘Contactless Check-in’, guests can choose to check-in on the OYO app from anywhere, right after booking, thereby eliminating the need for a physical check-in upon arrival. Once guests arrive at the hotel, they will only need to pick the sanitised key card from the reception desk and then directly head to their room. This process enables social distancing and reduces the risk of infection.

The campaign film revolves around the concept ‘phone pe check-in, chaabi picking, seedha walk in’. It features a couple checking into an OYO hotel from different locations, including their house, a restaurant, a fair/amusement park, among others.

The film features Sood as OYO’s Manager of the Year, who sanitises the key card and places it in a designated circle at the reception desk. The guests show up and are thrilled to witness the contactless check-in process. Both the concept and script of the film came from OYO’s in-house global brand team, with support from UBIK Films on production.

The campaign will go live across a mix of offline and online channels, including print ads in English and Hindi language newspapers, radio, roadblock banners on desktop and app, ROS banners, WhatsApp, YouTube and social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn).

Speaking on the initiative, Shreerang Godbole, SVP and chief service officer, OYO Hotels & Homes, said, “In the past couple of months, we’re seeing travel coming back across geographies. For us, this means strengthening our efforts to provide a safe and secure experience for all our guests, partners and employees. Traditionally, the hospitality industry involves a lot of human contact. However, given the current reality, digitisation of physical processes is not just an option or add-on, it's a necessity.”

“The insight behind this campaign was to simplify processes and eliminate steps that can be carried out in a socially distanced manner. We, therefore, mapped the entire customer journey, right from the moment the guest walks through our doors and digitised maximum processes, considerably reducing the need for physical contact. We enabled technology where we could, encouraging digital payments, making the app and website booking process simpler by enabling a three-click process, launched SBYE to give peace of mind to guests and now, we’re offering ‘Contactless Check-in’. We’re confident that with our efforts to ensure their safety, guests will have a pleasant experience while staying in an OYO hotel.”

Added Mayur Hola, head of global brand, OYO Hotels & Homes, “As a tech and data-driven company, the pandemic has pushed us to hustle and innovate big time. As travellers step out again, we’re focused on offering safer, tech-enabled experiences for everyone, who chooses to stay with us. With ‘Contactless Check-in’, we’re enabling a socially distanced check-in experience for all - our partners, employees and guests. This campaign interacts with our consumers in our usual fun and quirky manner, while ensuring the message is loud and clear - check-in safely from wherever, whenever.”

Recently, OYO had also launched ‘Sanitised Before Your Eyes’, an on-request initiative through which OYO’s guests can request the hotel’s on-ground staff to sanitise high touch spots or frequently touched surfaces right in front of their eyes. The sanitisation process will be carried out either through an aerosol disinfectant or by using a spray handy sanitiser machine.