Unfortunately, there are also a number of drawbacks to offering services via the Uber platform.
The American company announced that it will allow Brussels taxi drivers to offer their services on its application. A decision that will benefit both drivers and users, the mighty platform thinks, but the question is whether this 'offer' is not a path to the abyss for taxi drivers?
A major disadvantage of selling services on a platform is that you do not build a customer relationship. If customers are satisfied after the taxi ride, they are more likely to order from Uber again, without the guarantee that it will end up with you. According to Uber, drivers will spend less time driving around looking for passengers or waiting at taxi ranks and more time driving with a paying passenger on board.
advantages or disadvantages
There are of course advantages. Uber is an accessible platform with a lot of traffic and enjoys great brand awareness. Investing in your own website is not a must or it creates an extra sales channel next to your own channels. Marketing is actually done for you by Uber.
Unfortunately, there are also a number of drawbacks to offering services via the Uber platform. For example, you will have to pay commission on every service that goes out through their platform. In addition, the following points are not always easy, such as an Uber policy where you are punished if you do not comply with it or if you do not have insight into customer data. Perhaps the most important disadvantage is that many competitors sometimes offer the same services cheaper.
“The app also allows them to offer their services to new audiences, both local and international, that they may have wanted but were unable to serve before.”
Whether the aforementioned disadvantages are a reason for you not to start is of course up to you. In any case, it is important that you continue to focus on opportunities in the market instead of the difficulties. Uber wants to contribute to the transformation of mobility in Brussels. By placing services in the Uber app, you immediately appeal to an incredibly wide audience. There is a good chance that you will be able to create more rides, but you still have to watch out for the percentages that you have to submit to the platform for this.
The collaboration between taxis and Uber, resulting from the new Taxi Plan, also marks an important step towards the unification of the sector, according to Uber. After years of conflict, the collaboration should also make it possible to reduce traffic jams and empty kilometers in Brussels. Via the Uber services, passengers can see the fare in advance, but the taximeter is still used to determine the final price of the ride. This is paid afterwards via the Uber app.
This decision fits in with Uber's ambition to integrate all taxis on its application by 2025. More than 2021 taxi drivers have already registered there in 120.000, the company indicates. And “a number of European markets saw triple-digit growth in taxi rides, such as Austria, Germany, Spain and Turkey.” Suspicion remains, because this way of working makes the platform more powerful than ever and it has all customer data, not only of its own customers, but also of the data of the taxi companies that offer their services on the platform. This makes Uber the Bol.com of the taxi sector.
Laurent Slits
Slits started his career as a lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and continued as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he guided projects in strategy, organization and operations in the energy, transport and public sector in Europe and Africa. .
