Famous Budget Hotel Chain Scooped Up for $525M

Motel 6 has 1,500 or so locations sprinkled throughout the United States and Canada, and now a hotel giant from India is about to take over. The Wall Street Journal reports that Oyo has agreed to buy the budget motel chain for $525 million from parent company Blackstone, as part of Oyo's efforts to boost its presence in the US. "Motel 6's strong brand recognition, financial profile, and network in the US, combined with Oyo's entrepreneurial spirit, will be instrumental in charting a sustainable path forward for the company," Gautam Swaroop, CEO of Oyo International, says in a statement.

The all-cash deal is set to be completed by year's end and will also fold the chain's offshoot Studio 6 hotel brand into the deal, per the New York Times. Motel 6 will continue to operate as its own separate entity, Swaroop added. The Journal notes that the first Motel 6 location opened in 1962 in Santa Barbara, California, and soon became known for its "roadside locations, no-frills lodging, and folksy 1986 advertising campaign that told customers, 'We'll leave the light on for you.'"

Blackstone purchased Motel 6 in 2012 for $1.9 billion. Oyo, meanwhile, which was founded in 2013, started making inroads in the US starting in 2019 and now has more than 300 hotels in 35 states, per the Washington Post. "This transaction is a terrific outcome for investors and is the culmination of an ambitious business plan that more than tripled our investors' capital and generated over $1 billion in profit over our hold period," Rob Harper, a senior managing director at Blackstone, said in a statement. (More Motel 6 stories.)