How to Increase Uber’s Pick up Rate from the Airport: A PM’s Perspective

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Several days ago I read about Uber pick up/drop off “problem”, namely “There are more Uber drop-offs at the airports than pick-ups. What are the reasons and what can be done to improve pick up metrics?”

Well, this caught my attention immediately, it’s actually a great challenge for a Product Manager to work on first by identifying problems from both the drivers’ and passengers’ perspective, come up with multiple hypotheses and test them to find the “best” solution to increase the pick-up rate from the airports. I guess the best one might differ depending on the country, airport policies, Uber fares, customer segments, etc.

Source: Giphy

Let’s discuss some initial research to have an overall understanding of what problem we are trying to solve.

Uber was founded in 2009 in California, now operates in more than 700 cities ranging from Montevideo to Iowa city, from Nashville to Manchester, from Kharkiv to Dar Es Salaam and many more. They serve more than 600 airports worldwide with around 3.9 million drivers. Uber has 91 million monthly active users (can you imagine this?). So taking into account THIS volume of platform usage, I should be very careful about my recommendations on new features or feature improvements.

Source: Giphy

So, let’s define the real pain points of both the drivers and the passengers and give a product solution that presumably will solve the issues on both sides.

What are the problems:

Parking fees.

Airports normally have very high parking fees and it’s not beneficial for taxi drivers to stay there all day long waiting for a passenger. The longer they stay in the airport, the more they’ll need to pay.

The distance from the city center.

Drivers typically do not hang out in airport areas because of point 1 and because it takes time and fuel to get to the airport without a passenger.

Passengers’ perspective:

Long waiting time

No cars available

In some countries, passengers might not have an internet connection, and we all know that the airport wifis are often horrible

So, what is the hypothesis to test?

The first thing that came to my mind was compensation for the parking fees in the airports by Uber. Later research showed that passengers are the ones paying for it :)

Another hypothesis I came up with is called “Double rides.”

What does this mean?

Let’s first define some assumptions/preconditions:

• Average ride duration from any point in the city to the airport is 2 hrs
• Taking into account the traffic load, the ride duration ranges from 1.48 to 2.25 hrs
• Taking into account the flight delays, Uber drivers can be forced to wait in the Airport parking zone for, let’s say, 0.5–1 hour

Ok, now let’s have a practical example of how the feature should work.

First of all, Uber should cover the parking fees for this period so that the drivers have a better incentive to pick up passengers from the airport area.

Let’s say, you have a flight at 3 PM, you order an Uber and start your journey. Taking into account all assumptions/preconditions stated above, other passengers can book a ride for 5 PM from the airport you are heading to. This means the driver can take a passenger to the airport at 3 pm and pick up another passenger from the airport at 5 (given the 2nd passenger booked the car for 5 pm in advance).

Several problems solved:

1. The driver earns money for a 2-way ride (to the airport and from the airport)
2. The driver doesn’t stay in the airport for longer than needed and thus doesn’t pay any parking fee in vain
3. The arriving passengers book a ride beforehand and don’t need to worry about finding a car
4. The arriving passengers do not need to solve the issue of finding wifi or an internet source as they’ll order the taxi in advance (whenever they have an internet connection).

So, “Double rides” might bring the following:

• The optimization of logistics for the drivers (fewer expenses, more income)
• An increase in customer satisfaction score for Uber (customers will definitely appreciate not paying parking fees and not waiting in the airports)
• Less average waiting time for passengers in the airports

Et voila, everyone is happy….yeah yeah, I know that this is easier to say than to implement, but hey, any great feature starts with just an idea ;)

Do you think there is another hypothesis worth testing? Let’s talk.

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