Uber announced plans to offer in-app hotel listings and other “travel mode” features, while offering enhanced perks through its Uber One subscription. Meanwhile there's a pending lawsuit from the FTC alleging the company used deceptive billing practices tied to the membership.
Uber announced Wednesday it’s adding hotel bookings, along with the launch of a new “Travel Mode” across its apps, which bundles together trip-planning tools like restaurant recommendations, tourist attractions, and food reservations, as the Associated Press reports. The feature also provides enhanced delivery while traveling, with options to send meals, drinks, or forgotten essentials straight to a hotel room.
“Uber is becoming an app for everything — helping people go, get, and now travel all in one place,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, in a press release. “We’re all living through a moment of real cognitive overload: too many apps, too many decisions, too much noise. At the end of the day, our job is to help people reclaim their time, spending less of it managing the logistics of life and more of it actually living.”
Uber will soon be listing roughly 700,000 hotels and other property listings from Expedia Group, and around a million vacation rentals from Vrbo are expected to follow later this year. Uber rides will also soon be bookable inside Expedia’s app, with discounted ride prompts tied to hotel stays.
Hotel bookings will be open to all users, but members of Uber One — which runs $9.99 a month — will get steeper perks, including discounted rates on a rotating pool of hotels and credits that can be applied to future rides.
The New York Times notes that the Federal Trade Commission sued Uber last year, and the case is still pending. The FTC alleges that Uber failed to clearly disclose the Uber One subscription terms to its customers and made cancellations difficult.
Additionally, the company says users will also soon be able to book restaurant tables via OpenTable directly in-app, as competitors like DoorDash move into the same space with their own reservation tools. Uber is also reportedly testing a service that lets riders pre-order snacks or drinks to have ready when they’re picked up in an Uber Black vehicle, with launches planned in cities including Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.
“Consumers are spending too much time coordinating their life, using multiple apps. AI is in the air and they’re all trying to figure out, how does AI help me or does it not help me?” said Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, speaking to the AP. “Our goal with these announcements is to bring everything into one app, to help them save time, and to also help them save money.”
Company officials note that tens of millions of riders use Uber for airport trips each year, and a large share of rides happen outside a user’s home city, per the AP.
Meanwhile, sexual assault cases continue to pile up against Uber, per the Times. Earlier this month, the company lost two early test cases tied to lawsuits over sexual assaults involving drivers, with thousands of similar claims still pending.
As SFist reported in March, the company expanded its feature to specifically request female drivers to more US cities in light of mounting sexual assault cases.
Related: Uber Expands Female Driver Request Feature In US as Assault Cases Rise
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