Riding in Bangkok’s taxi cabs can be a harrowing experience – the haggling, debating over the meter, and even the potential for deadly sword play. But, fear not, Uber has come to town.
Uber officially launched in Bangkok yesterday. With a fleet of UberBlack high-end sedans hitting the streets, the company aims to bring its ethos of “affordable luxury” to the city, according to Michael Brown, Regional General Manager for Asia.
“Our goal is to provide really reliable, safe, clean, quality transport,” Brown said. “We try to give the rider an affordable sense of pampering.”
After requesting a car through the Uber app, users see the location tracking of the driver who is coming to pick them up, a photo of the driver, the driver’s license plate and an estimated time of arrival. Tthe wait time for a pickup is currently about 10 minutes in Bangkok. Drivers arrive in luxury black sedans to whisk you to your destination in style. At the end of the ride, passengers and drivers may rate each other.
For these perks, there are trade-offs. An UberBlack ride will cost you about 50 percent more than your average Bangkok cab ride.
“Bangkok has some of the cheapest taxis in the world,” Brown said. “But sometimes you get what you pay for. We think that when people ride in an Uber, they will instantly appreciate the difference in quality, safety, cleanliness and reliability. We always want to be price competitive with whatever product we’re offering, but price is only one aspect of moving people around. Uber is really a different experience than riding in a taxi.”
Uber is even turning Songkran into a “first class experience” with a special holiday offer of trucks stocked with Super Soaker water guns and cold beverages in which revelers can celebrate.
While there appears to be a deluge of car-booking apps available in Bangkok now, Uber seems unfazed by competition such as EasyTaxi and GrabTaxi. Those apps make it easier for users to book local taxis, whereas Uber views itself as a completely different car ride experience.
“I don’t want to sound dismissive,” Brown said. “But I worked at Twitter previously and the CEO, Dick Costolo, once said, ‘When race car drivers race, they typically don’t look out the side windows at the other cars because that’s how they crash. They look out the front window because that’s how they’re most effective in driving fast.’ I genuinely would say that Uber’s approach is to drive our own race.”
Uber does seem to be in a race to expand around the globe. Since launching in 2009, it has established operations in 34 countries. Bangkok is Uber’s latest addition in the Asia Pacific region on a quickly growing list that already includes Singapore, Taipei, Seoul and Mumbai, among other cities.
This rapid expansion has not gone entirely smoothly – particularly in the United States, where there have been numerous lawsuits against Uber and backlash from local cab drivers in some states. However, Uber has yet to experience such issues in Asia, according to Brown.
There is also the issue of “surge pricing,” where prices for a ride escalate based on supply and demand. When the demand for cars starts to outweigh the supply of available drivers, Uber compensates by increasing prices. Surge-based pricing theoretically balances supply and demand by discouraging some passengers from riding with Uber at a certain moment and encouraging more drivers to come onto Uber’s network. The app notifies users of surge pricing before booking a car and can notify them when the surge pricing period is over. While this transparent practice warns customers of surge pricing, it has also led to some disgruntled users – particularly since prices may surge to seven or eight times a ride’s usual base fare.
Along with its launch in Bangkok this week, Uber just launched UberRUSH, a new service that moves packages instead of people. The trial phase of UberRUSH is taking place in New York City, where Uber is partnering with bike messengers for its first foray into the courier market. The deal with UberRUSH is that users can have a package picked up within an hour and delivered for a fee of USD15. UberRUSH launched a few days ago, so it’s doubtful we’ll see it in Asia anytime soon.
If you want to try cruising in an UberBlack, there’s a special promotion until the end of this month giving new users THB300 off their first ride with promotion code: “UberSawasdee.”
Photos: Uber Thailand
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