Uber has added hotel bookings to its app through a partnership with Expedia Group, marking the ride-hailing giant’s most ambitious step yet toward becoming an “everything app” that handles transportation, food delivery, and travel in a single platform.
Users can now book hotel rooms through the Uber app, drawing from Expedia’s network of 700,000 hotels and properties globally. More than one million vacation rentals from Vrbo, Expedia’s vacation rental subsidiary, will be added later this year. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the partnership.
“Consumers are spending too much time coordinating their life, using multiple apps,” said Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer. “Our goal with these announcements is to bring everything into one app, to help them save time, and to also help them save money.”
The hotel feature is particularly significant for Uber’s 100 million airport trips per year and the 1.5 billion trips that took place outside a rider’s home city last year. Uber One members, who pay $9.99 per month, will receive a 20% discount on a rotating list of 10,000 hotels and 10% back in Uber credits for rides.
For New York, where Uber is a dominant mode of transportation and the tourism industry is a critical economic engine, the hotel booking integration creates new synergries. Visitors arriving at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports can now book their ride and their hotel in the same app, while business travelers gain a streamlined workflow for expense reporting.
The announcement came at Uber’s annual product event, which also included an upgraded travel mode for restaurant and point-of-interest discovery, upcoming restaurant reservations through OpenTable, and a premium service that lets Uber Black passengers order drinks or snacks that will be waiting in the car.
The moves put Uber in closer competition with DoorDash, which recently added restaurant reservations after acquiring hospitality platform SevenRooms, and reflect a broader industry trend of super-app consolidation as tech companies compete for consumer attention and spending.
Source: NBC New York | Business of New York
