India-based global hospitality chain OYO Rooms has rolled out a four-day work week for its employees until June and has implemented a flexible “infinite” paid leave period through the end of July as coronavirus has surged again in the southeast Asian country.
A company official said they may consider expanding the new initiatives across global operations, including in the Middle East.
The initiatives, already announced for the company’s operations in India, aim to alleviate employees’ stress levels as the pandemic has recently beleaguered the sub-continent.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Ritesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive officer of OYO Rooms, said: “Starting today we are moving to a four-day work week but implementing it slightly differently, making Wednesdays off to let OYOpreneurs have a mid-week breather”.
2/ Starting today we are moving to a 4 day work week but implementing it slightly differently, making Wednesdays off to let OYOpreneurs have a mid-week breather. We also launched a No Questions Asked Flexible Infinite Paid Leaves.
— Ritesh Agarwal (@riteshagar) May 12, 2021
He also said that OYO will be launching “no questions asked flexible infinite paid leaves”.
“[The new initiative] is being rolled out in India for now,” a spokesperson of the company told Arabian Business.
“[But] this could be rolled out across OYO’s operations globally including in the Middle East, though a final decision is yet to be made,” the spokesperson said.
On the likely timeline for implementation of these new initiatives in OYO’s Middle East operations, the company official said: “It’s still too early to say but it’s certainly been looked at and it’s very much part of the regional management team’s agenda.”
The OYO official also said the UAE was recovering at a different pace than the rest of the world.
OYO’s announcement on flexible paid leave meant that its employees in the India could now take off work whenever they need to.
Ritesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive officer of OYO Rooms
“No need to log them, just let the manager know, no reasons needed, none asked,” Agarwal said in the tweeted message.
The OYO founder said the coronavirus pandemic has continued to test employees’ physical and mental wellbeing.
“One thing that truly matters is having more time for our loved ones and ourselves,” the tweet thread said.
The pandemic has hit the hospitality sector the most, with hotels having to shut their operations for many months last year. The second wave that began in mid-March in India was an added blow on the sector.
In the UAE, the hospitality industry has been on the road to recovery after large-scale vaccination drives.
The GCC region has reportedly been seeing a rise in internal travel for leisure and business purposes since the beginning of the year, though international travel to and from the region still remains curtailed.
OYO’s GCC arm has mainly been focussing on long stays, weekend getaways and wooing companies looking to move to budget hotels as part of its new strategy in the GCC market to deal with the new post-pandemic marketplace.
A senior official at OYO GCC earlier told Arabian Business that the hotel chain also resorted to aggressively rolling out its ‘sanitised stay’ initiative to cover all its properties across the GCC region to achieve higher revenue growth this year.
OYO, which entered the UAE market in October 2018, has achieved a footprint of 4,461 keys in 310 hotels and homes by the end of last year.
The SoftBank-backed Indian start-up unicorn is currently present in about 800 cities in various countries.
Follow us on
