Consumers Can Now Book Flight With Uber App

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As part of the ride-booking giants’ push to become a travel “super app”, Uber has launched flight bookings to its UK app to allow customers to book a complete journey across multiple forms of transport.

The San Francisco-based group 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.

Speaking on the launch, Andrew Brem, Uber’s UK General Manager told the media that the launch of commercial flight bookings 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.

The UK, one of Uber’s biggest markets outside North America, is serving as a testing ground for these ambitions, and Uber has already rolled out domestic train, Eurostar, and coach ticket bookings in the country.

Train bookings had already proved “incredibly popular” with customers, and grown 40 per cent month on month since their launch last year, without disclosing how many tickets had been sold. Brem added.

According to Uber, Uber has partnered 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.

The move is part of a long-term vision of Chief Executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, who first talked about Uber becoming a wider travel platform in 2018. This plan was delayed by the pandemic, which brought the travel and transport industry to a halt, and led the group to focus on its food delivery business. Uber has attempted to offer flights in the past through a different model.

Brem said he “hoped” users had noticed better reliability from the service, but could not guarantee that fares would not rise further to keep drivers working on the app.

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