OYO Wizard claims 1.5 Mn paid subscribers in 9 months; accounts for 25% bookings

The trend of launching loyalty programmes has been catching on in India. Zomato Gold, Amazon Prime, and Swiggy Super have been evangelising the paid subscription route for creating a loyal user base. While Zomato and Amazon Prime lead the subscription game in India, SoftBank-backed OYO has claimed 1.5 million subscribers since last August.

OYO Wizard is designed to recognise and reward frequent customers and comes with benefits such as guaranteed discounts, cashback, discount coupons, and upgrades.

Importantly, the firm claims that 25% of overall booking happens through Wizard.

“For Wizard hotels in particular, 70% transactions by members are made on these hotels, resulting in higher income as compared to non-Wizard hotels. Thus, making the paid program extremely beneficial to both guests and hotels,” mentioned the company’s press statement.

Presently, OYO Wizard is available in three variants- Wizard Blue (Rs 99 for 6 months), Wizard Silver (Rs 199 for 1 year), and Wizard Gold (Rs 399 for 2 years).

Launching paid subscriptions have been quite a fad amongst consumer-facing Internet companies in India. Besides Zomato, Amazon, and Swiggy; Flipkart, Myntra and BookMyShow had also launched premium membership to hook users and retain them for a longer time.

Earlier this year, Paytm had also introduced Paytm First – a loyalty programme which covers paid subscriptions of several companies including Zomato, Eros Now, Sony Liv, Viu Premium, and Uber.

It’s worth noting that OYO Wizard had one million subscribers until the beginning of April this year. The Gurugram-based company had amassed 500K subscribers in just two months. It appears that summer vacation has been driving more Wizard subscription in India.

Given that no one has attempted subscription in budget accommodation, OYO Wizard would definitely gain significant interest from regular business travellers, millennials and families that prefer two-three holidays in a year.