Uber adds train, coach booking to its app in UK

London, Aug 3

To help customers book longer-distance ground travel, ride-hailing platform Uber is testing adding train and coach travel to its app in the UK via a fully integrated tie-up with Berlin-based multimodal travel platform, Omio. Omio said it has built up its consumer-facing apps for booking intercity and international travel, across a wide variety of supported transport options, over almost a decade of operations.

But, in recent years, it has been ploughing resources into building out a B2B line -- making its inventory available to partners via APIs so they can add transport booking options to their own apps and platforms, reports TechCrunch.

"Uber is the first partner that is both at this scale but also the first that gets access to our full ticketing API, so you actually are, as a customer, able to do everything within the Uber app a" so it is the first with respect to this product that we're offering," Omio CEO Naren Shaam was quoted as saying.

Omio's earlier B2B partnerships include some transport providers themselves, such as UK-based LNER, as well as the travel search engine Kayak and smartphone maker Huawei, among others.

Shaam said the tie-up will put its inventory in front of the circa over 5 million customers Uber claims in the UK market.

"This is the beginning of our partnership; it will expand a" beyond just geography," he suggested, noting that Omio's B2B partners can "pick and choose" from its full inventory range of supported transport models to offer their own customers.

"It is very clear to me that we are never going to have 100 per cent of all the eyeballs in the wall using only Omio, so very much the company is evolving into a more data company -- where the data and our inventory becomes a core asset," he added.

--IANS