LONDON – Ride-hailing firm, Uber has incorporated flight booking feature to its UK app to become ‘super app’, days after Botim introduced the feature and envisioned becoming the Ultra App.
The development would allow customers to book a complete journey across multiple forms of transport with comfort and few swipes.
As of now, the company has started rolling out the new booking tool for domestic and international flights to UK customers, and plans to expand it to users across the country in the coming weeks.
Andrew Brem, Uber’s UK general manager, told the Financial Times that the in-app booking feature was “the latest and most ambitious step” in the company’s strategy to expand its core ride-booking business into a wider travel booking platform.
UK is one of Uber’s biggest markets outside North America and is serving as a test ground for new features. The San Francisco-based group has already rolled out domestic train, Eurostar and coach ticket bookings in the country.
Brem said train bookings had already proved “incredibly popular” and grown 40 per cent month on month since their launch last year.
For the air travel booking, Uber has collaborated with travel booking company Hopper to sell flights, and will take a small commission from each sale; it also has the option of adding a booking fee on top in the future.
Uber’s Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi had first shared plans about the firm becoming a wider travel platform in 2018 but the pandemic delayed the execution of plan and instead compelled the company to focus on its food delivery business.
Uber is not completely new to air travel as in 2019, it launched $200 helicopter rides in the US for trips between Manhattan and JFK airport under the brand Uber Copter, which was an air charter broker. The service was cancelled in 2020 after the social distancing protocols were introduced which affected almost every other industry.
The flight booking option would also funnel more users into Uber’s main ride-booking business and in future, the firm can offer discounted rides to the airport with a flight booking.
As far as statistics are concerned, about 15 per cent of Uber’s gross bookings are airport trips, while in the UK 40 per cent of journeys start or end near transit hubs; in recent months as travel and tourism rebounded, Uber has also seen demand for its app to go up.
Currently, Uber has more drivers working in the UK than before the pandemic; however, the officials at the firm are still not sure whether the fares could stay the same or go up in future.
