New Delhi, May 11 (IANS): Hospitality major OYO on Tuesday said that consumers will now be able to know the vaccination state of the staff of its partner hotels.

Noting that vaccination is the most important tool to fight Covid-19 and get back to normalcy, a statement by the company said that it has rolled out 'VaccinAid', a vaccine visibility initiative to drive awareness and social reinforcement among small and medium hotels and homes to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

In a tweet, Founder and CEO of OYO, Ritesh Agarwal said: "Vaccination is the most important intervention against COVID-19. We are launching an industry-first feature, VaccinAid, to show self-reported vaccination status of hotel staff across OYOs."

As per OYO's internal consumer survey, 87 per cent respondents said they would prefer hotels with vaccinated staff. With VaccinAid, as a part of the booking journey, users on the OYO app will have visibility on hotels and homes with vaccinated staff, either with the first dose or second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Abhinav Sinha, Global COO & Chief Product Officer, OYO said, "This initiative is crucial to aid the recovery of impacted industries across the board, specifically for travel due to pandemic-led restrictions and the worry of stepping out.

"With mass vaccination drives taking place across the country, self-declared vaccine visibility on the app is a simple yet powerful intervention to reinforce trust among consumers. This is also our small way of promoting the larger cause of vaccination among our customer base as well as with our hotel partners and their staff," Sinha said.