OYO to acquire Amsterdam-based Leisure Group

Hyderabad: OYO, a hospitality firm on Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire Amsterdam-based vacation rental company Leisure Group from Axel Springer. OYO said, the acquisition will help it move a step closer in realising its vision of becoming a global real estate brand while maintaining leadership in the hospitality industry. Leisure Group is a leading vacation rental company in Europe and manages holiday homes, holiday parks and holiday apartments, it added.

As part of the deal, Leisure Group CEO Tobias Wann will join OYO's leadership group as CEO, Vacation Homes, OYO Global. OYO founder andgroup CEO Ritesh Agarwal said, "We see vacation homes as a unique opportunity with 115,000 units of homes now getting added to our already growing count of beautiful homes and we are excited to continue maintaining our global industry leadership".

Leisure Group has proven capabilities in helping develop Europe into a vacation rentals hotspot and OYO is keen to leverage their competencies towards ensuring beautiful vacation rental and urban homes experience for millions of tourists from every part of the world, he added.

OYO's Global Chief Strategy Officer Maninder Gulati said: "Today, more than 2.8 mn holidaymakers from over 118 countries book their holiday every year with Leisure Group. The combined strength of both brands can scale the opportunity multifold." Through this acquisition, the size and scale of the opportunity can be immediately unlocked for OYO's Homes business, he added.

On the development, Andreas Wiele, President Classifieds Media Axel Springer SE said: "Leisure Group has become one of the best integrated holiday home providers in just four years under the excellent leadership of Tobias Wann and his colleagues". For OYO Hotels & Homes, it is thus a perfect platform for driving forward further consolidation in this segment, he added.

Leisure Group, through its Belvilla, DanCenter, and Danland brands, offers more than 30,000 fully managed holiday homes across 13 countries in Europe and through its Traum-Ferienwohnungen brand, offers a subscription-based home management service with over 85,000 homes across 50 countries. This represents a total inventory of over 300 thousand rooms.

With the Leisure Group set to join the chain, OYO will have footprints in more than 800 cities across 24 countries - UK, US, India, China, Malaysia, Nepal, the UK, UAE, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and more recently Japan.