Uber is expanding its travel options (opens in new tab) by giving people the opportunity to pay for car rentals and purchase tickets for trains, planes, and coach buses, but only in the United Kingdom.
Uber states the reason for this change is to make cross-country travel easier to plan as it’ll serve as a central hub of sorts instead of dealing with numerous apps and websites. You can just have everything on one app.
The official list of all rail companies, airlines, and other travel partners that will take part in Uber’s service has yet to be revealed. The full list will arrive in the coming months before the service officially launches in during the summer of 2022.
In the same announcement, Jamie Heywood, Uber’s Regional General Manager for the UK, Northern & Eastern Europe, said these changes were a “natural progression.” Heywood points out that people have already “been able to book rides, bikes, boat services, and scooters on the Uber app…” for years. He added that Uber will be incorporating hotel bookings later on in the year.
The announcement also clarifies that Uber is not providing these services themselves; there won’t be an Uber Train or Jet flown by a gig pilot. It’s simply a travel agent feature.
As for outside the UK, Uber didn’t state or even imply whether or not the all-in-one travel service will be making its way to other countries and cities.
This isn’t some random change as Uber is well known for incorporating new services in an effort to become more than just a ride-hailing app and be a Do Everything app.
In early March 2022, Uber introduced its Uber Explore feature on the app that lets people check out the local nightlife as well as make dinner reservations and see the reviews on these places. From there, Uber wants you to book a ride to a nightclub or use Uber Eats to order food.
Uber is a company that attempts to incorporate as much as it can as it has had a storied history of hemorrhaging money and reporting massive net losses.
According to its third-quarter results for 2021 (opens in new tab), Uber had a net loss of $2.4 billion thanks to some bad investments. Its fourth-quarter (opens in new tab) went a lot better as the company earned a net income of $892 million.
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