Every hotel front desk in the world hears it, multiple times a day, in every language.
“Can you call me a cab,” said Mike Coscetta, president of the hospitality property management service Mews. It’s “one of the most common sentences when you run hotel operations.”
And so begins a long process that puts a substantial strain on the hotel industry. The receptionist calls a local provider, but the line is busy, or the wait is 40 minutes, or the driver takes a higher-paying fare and never shows. The guest grows frustrated. The staff member, already juggling six other things, is stuck playing dispatcher for a service the hotel doesn’t control, doesn’t profit from, and can’t guarantee.
Uber thinks it can make that entire problem disappear. The ride-hailing company has partnered with Mews to embed ride booking, real-time tracking, and integrated billing directly into the platform hotels already use to run their operations. Instead of calling a local taxi company, a front desk agent will book an Uber for a guest in a few clicks, all within the same system they manage check-ins, rooms, and payments.
“As a very frequent traveler, what I find super useful about Uber is I trust the product and I trust the price,” said Christophe Peymirat, head of Uber for Business EMEA. “I know that it’s a fair price, which is not always the case when you find other solutions.”
