Name: Uber for Business: the ultimate ground travel hack
Uploaded: 2025-08-21T18:48:14.325Z
Duration: 32 min 8 s
Description: Uber for Business: the ultimate ground travel hack

Transcript for "Uber for Business: the ultimate ground travel hack": Think ground hack. I'm Will Madison. I'm a member of our enterprise partnerships team. I wanna thank you all for joining us today. If you're new to Uber for business, what we do here is we bring the best parts of Uber to organizations around the globe with our global scale integrated solutions and exceptional customer service. Uber for Business or what we call U4B empowers organizations to both streamline their travel and expenses, reimagine, employee well-being, and elevate the overall customer experience. I'm joined today by Kristen Walsh, a member also another member of the enterprise partnerships team. Just so you guys can get to know us a little bit better, I'll start with an icebreaker, and we encourage everyone to write their answers in the chat as well. So, Kristen, what is your favorite seat when you're flying for work? Yes. Hi, everyone. Great question, Will. I feel like my answer will probably be fairly common, but it's gonna have to be the aisle seat. I hate feeling trapped if I wanna get up and wake someone up from their slumber. So that's my answer. What about you? Mine's pretty similar. Mine's definitely an aisle seat, but my preference is an aisle seat in first or business class. Don't get to fly that very regularly for work because I'm not traveling far enough, but that's definitely my preference if possible. But sorry. Jumping back, to the content for today, wanna start with a little bit of housekeeping. Just for everyone here who's listening live today, if you wanna submit questions, you're just gonna see a little q and a tab on the right hand side of your screen. We're gonna take as many of those questions as we can at the end of today's call. But if we don't get to them today, we're gonna make sure our team follows up to address those questions to you directly. Additionally, if you wanna do some of your own research, maybe you don't have questions right now but you wanna learn more, you can also find related content in the docs tab, also on that right hand side of the screen. But my strongest recommendation, is for everyone to click the get demo button. Again, right there on the top right. This is gonna ensure that a member of my team reaches out direct to schedule some one on one time to answer any of your questions and also walk you through the different solutions that, we can provide here at Uber for Business. And the last thing I'll say here is don't worry if you miss something today. We're gonna send a recording out to everyone who attended this, so you'll be able to rereview and come back to this at a later date. And just kind of going over what we're gonna be covering today is we're gonna be talking about, you know, kind of spoiler alert here, travelers' expectations in 2025 when they're traveling for work, how companies can really make ground transportation, like, actually work for their employees, and also some pro tips that separate what we consider good from great ground transportation travel programs. So the first section that we're gonna dive in today, and I wanna cover are just some trends that we're seeing within the business travel industry. First of which, which I'm sure everyone here on this call knows, is that travelers have access to corporate cards more so than they ever have it in the past. You know, 73% of American business travelers now have a corporate card. That's according to GBTA. So it's a huge percentage of travelers that are now utilizing company owned cards. Now not all of those cards are physical cards that fit in your wallet. We're seeing companies utilizing virtual cards or third party platforms like Apple Pay, on Uber, and it's a really great functionality because we know that travelers want the flexibility. So with Uber, we make it very easier for them. Now with more people having access to corporate cards, we understand that it makes it trickier to manage those expenses, especially with although people having corporate cards, we find that only 50% actually have a mandate to exclusively use their corporate card when traveling for work. You know? With more cards going out in the market, you know, that has its own set of concerns and considerations. We're also seeing that travelers in The United States are willing to spend more when traveling for business than they do in their personal lives. As you can see here on the slide, it's more than nine out of 10 people say that they spend more. You know, 33% or excuse me. 34% are more likely to book higher end hotels than they would if traveling for personal. 33% are more likely to take direct flights versus having a layover. 26% order room service on business trips compared to when they're traveling for personal, and 22% say that they tip more generously when using company money versus personal money. That said, we're seeing another trend emerge is that not only our employees, when traveling, getting more access to utilize company preferred payment methods, They're spending more money when they're traveling for work. We're also seeing that employees like to spend some of their own money when it's attached to a business trip. 91% of US travelers sit said that they're willing to foot the bill for upgrades, either into higher quality accommodations. They'll pay for additional nights, for that, quote, leisure travel that I'm sure we've all heard so much about. Another 30% say that they're willing to pay for premium seating. I'm one of those people. And 27 say that they're willing to pay for upgraded transportation. So recapping there is more people have access to company cards, more people are willing to spend more money on business trips than they do in personal, and they wanna spend money so that they can enjoy that trip and layer on some some personal benefits for themselves. And this leads us into another trend that we're seeing is that perks are becoming more and more important for travelers. So seven out of 10 travelers want the ability to use corporate perks that apply to both their personal and business travel. They want lounge access. They wanna be able to earn miles or loyalty points with their favorite hotels or airlines. There's a whole laundry list of ways that employees want to be able to cash in when they're traveling. What's great news for travelers is that Uber, you know, has some of these programs to enable these perks for their employees without having to raise costs when your employees are utilizing those company issued, payment structures like corporate cards. Now all of these data points and trends, they can get confusing. And if if you, on this call, are the person responsible for deciding who gets access to what travel arrangements and amenities, perks, or you're the person responsible for handling expensing and reimbursements after those trips, it's possible there's never been a harder time for you to get this right and get it perfect, which brings us to a to a real question of what does, like, better actually look like when travelers are this picky and willing to spend so much of the company money? There's a lot of great ways we can tackle that question here at Uber, but, Kristen, why don't you start us off so that we can talk about how we can enable travel managers and expense managers when with with how it pertains to ground transportation? Yeah. Thanks, Will. Of course. So I think the question is how do companies start making ground transportation actually work? And that answer seemingly is that we need to start giving travelers more flexibility. So for starters, that kind of means moving beyond that one size fits all concept. What we're seeing is corporate travelers expect options that are beyond just taking an Uber x ride. That's where a business comfort vehicle type will enter. Those trips are higher quality, higher rated drivers, nicer interior, but still at that nominal cost. And then, of course, maybe for your VIP travelers, business black is a great option as they might need to be prepping for a big meeting or a big presentation. Essentially, different trips of different needs and company transportation should reflect that. So again, an employee going to a general training, business comfort works great. If it's VP level and above and they're heading to close a major deal, Business Black gives them the comfortability and the space to prepare for that and a little bit of luxury as well. Aside from providing that comfortability and options and vehicle types, many employees are actually prioritizing sustainability. Actually, 74% of travelers say minimizing their environmental footprint while traveling for business is becoming increasingly top of mind. Basically, sustainability isn't kind of just this buzzword anymore. So what we're seeing is Uber Green and these comfort electric vehicles aren't these kind of like feel good trendy options. Travelers are increasingly factoring in environmental impact into their employee satisfaction scores. So, essentially, when you're able to provide these type of vehicle options readily available at their fingertips, it's just an easy way to show corporate responsibility without sacrificing that convenience. Lastly, companies are looking to provide options that ease the anxiety that travel can cause. And we oftentimes hear travelers just want reliable transportation. And so that's where our Uber reserve feature steps in. When you're reserving a ride in advance, it kind of eliminates that anxiety of will my ride be there? Will I have a driver match to me? Will I get to my destination on time? And this is particularly crucial for early morning flights or important meetings. I know if I have a 6AM or 7AM flight, I need to leave my apartment at 4AM. Seems like the middle of the night. The night before, I'm always reserving my ride in advance because I wanna know that, one, I have a driver that is matched when I go to sleep. And then when I wake up, of course, in a rush trying to do last minute packing. The reserve feature actually adds fifteen minutes of extra wait time at the pickup. So I know that when the driver is there, I don't have to, you know, rush out. I can do any of my last minute packing and things that I need. But speaking of airport travel, it's, a huge component. Airport travel is a huge component of a corporate traveler's life. And so that's why we implemented what we call reserve airport pickup. So the app experience is the same as a regular reserve ride. But when a traveler inputs an airport into the pickup field, it recognizes that this is a reserve airport pickup ride. So what happens is we integrate flight tracking with your Uber trip. So if your flight is delayed, we will adjust the driver arrival times accordingly there. What's nice about being picked up at an airport is we also build in forty five minutes of wait time for economy and comfort trips, and then sixty minutes of wait time for any premium rides. So this leaves you plenty of time to deplane and head to the ride share area without wondering when the heck my driver is going to arrive. Through Uber for business, shifting gears a little bit, we also offer, of course, an administrative dashboard, that allows you to implement parameters and policies to kind of control how and when your employees are using Uber. So the dashboard actually gives you flexibility to be able to set boundaries, such as things like maybe restricting vehicle types. For example, maybe, of course, economy and comfort and business black vehicles are available to your employees, but maybe you wanna restrict things like a shared ride. You essentially wanna make the employee feel empowered, but still stay in control of your costs. And this ultimately reduces the number of policy exception requests you have to handle or your AP team has to handle. And it basically allows you to be a bit more proactive with expenses versus reactive. Ultimately, companies want policy compliance that doesn't make you look like the bad guys. So you're still letting your employees choose within guardrails, but you don't have to micromanage everything that they're doing. Ultimately, better compliance means a happier TNE team, and your employees are spending less time on doing their expense reports at the end of the month. So now that we've covered how you can create these flexible guardrails for your ground transportation, Will, why don't you walk us through how we're easing the burden for travelers and travel teams when it comes to our technology? Yeah. Happy to. Also, major fan of airport reserve pickup. Personally, I love it. I don't have to try and gamify my walk to the rideshare area. But speaking about technology, you know, one of the biggest things that where we really help in and step, step in and help with travel teams is our integrations with the leading expense providers. So we're supporting expense and travel teams here. We integrate with Concur, Coupa, Novon, Brex, Ramp, Imbursed, Chrome River. I think there's about 12 or 15 at this point who we integrate with. So there's no need to replace or change any of the existing systems that you have in place. We're a simple connection that allows us to send receipts directly into your expensing tool. For travelers, the technology, there's nothing really new for them to learn because it's the same Uber app that they likely already have for their personal life or are already using when traveling for work. We're just giving them access to more easily separate their business and personal expenses from the same application. No forced downloads, no managed access necessary. We're just simply giving them a profile that's exclusively intended for business usage. And, really, both sides, both the travelers and the travel teams, get a benefit that is positive for everybody. Right? I get my receipts auto uploaded into my expense tool. I don't have to go back in, look at those individual receipts. And it's very easy because I do enjoy a bit of leisure, to to separate those business and personal expenses and not make mistakes. Or as I did ten years ago with my previous company, have to cut a check back to my company for $82 because I use my corporate card for a personal expense. Now the expense part, again, as a traveler myself, I love having all of my receipts auto flow, but there's some other components that I love as a business traveler that come with Uber as it pertains to loyalty. Kristen, do you wanna talk about some of our largest loyalty partners? Yes. Would love to. This is, a fan favorite. Employees love what's in it for them. So, obviously, the loyalty programs that we have are going to get your people rewarded for the business travel they're taking. Starting number one here with our Delta Uber partnership. So this is fairly new. Basically, what you'll do is you'll add your SkyMiles number into your Uber account. And, basically, you're gonna start earning miles on any business trip or meal that you're ordering. So this is any trips that you're taking on that assigned business profile. What you'll get is three x miles per eligible dollar on Uber reserve trips, two x miles per eligible dollar spent on XL comfort black and black SUV, and then one x per dollar spent on x rides to and from specifically airports. I know Will loves the Delta partnership. I am a United girl, so it's a little bit of a bummer. But jumping into Marriott Bonvoy, same thing, you'll connect your Bonvoy account to the Uber app, and you'll see three x points on any premium ride, two x points on Uber X rides booked with reserve, And then two x points on any Eats orders over $40 to select properties like Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, and Element Hotels. Jumping down to corporate cards, we have a partnership with Amex. So if your company leverages Amex as a corporate card, specifically gold, and your employees assign that to their managed business profile, any trip taken on that profile, they're going to earn 5% Uber cash back on any Uber ride or Uber Eats order. This Uber cashback can then be used towards any personal rider meal. So if they're an active traveler, they'll be able to, you know, order dinner for their family one night once they rack up enough Uber cash points. And then finally, Uber One is our monthly membership program. So with Uber One I mean, I'm a avid user of Uber One, probably to a fault. But, you get free delivery on Uber Eats orders of 10 or $15 or more, in addition to a a few other discounts on top of that. And then on the ride side, you're getting 6% Uber cashback on any Uber trip you're taking. So it's a nice combination between Uber Eats and Uber ride benefits. Typically, Uber One memberships are $9.99 a month. With our partnership, you're able we're able to offer your employees three months free of Uber One followed by a discounted rate of $7.99 per month. So this is a really great kind of, like, blanket benefit to include in your benefits package simply by having a partnership with Uber for Business. So that's the fun part. It's one way to take care of your traveler's basic needs and, of course, give them, you know, extra benefits with these loyalty programs. But, Will, I know there's some features that admins use that travelers really love that I'll flip over to you. Yeah. Yes. I am the biggest Delta fan in the world. To confirm, I'm obsessed. I my Starbucks points roll into Delta. My Uber points exclusively Delta all day. But let's let's dive into some features that I would say best way to say is, like, your travelers are gonna thank you for and and allowing them to take the access. And the first of those is an exclusive ride type that we offer called business black. So what does that really mean? You know, as I'm sure everyone here knows, UberBLACK is our premium ride type. And what we've done for business customers is we've taken that premium experience from the consumer application and actually refined it to gear more towards business travelers. So what does that mean? Every driver on Business Black carries a commercial driver's license, has to maintain a 4.85 or higher overall lifetime rating as well. So these are true professional drivers who are also likely driving for other livery fleets, and they're bringing their, vehicles onto the Uber platform to drive more business customers to the meetings, into the airport, and whatever other travel that they need. Furthermore, when I'm traveling in business black, I can set my temperature preferences. I can set my conversation preferences in the app. I can also even let the driver know if I have bags or not before I book. And for those folks in your executive or senior leadership class who have EAs, we actually enable EAs and executives to pair their business profiles so that EAs can book these business black trips on behalf of the exec on behalf of the executives that they support and then get up to the up to the minute tracking of where that person is, where the car is, and then also get access to that executive's receipts. And really why this matters is, you know, long airport transfers, if someone has to be taking an important call while they're in transit, we wanna make sure that experience, again, is really elevated and is matching, again, what your top tier travelers expect. But even if you're getting a great ride to your destination, you know, you might be getting to your hotel at 1AM, and that opens up a whole new set of problems for travelers, namely the lack of food. I'm sure we've all stayed at a hotel that doesn't have a kitchen or the kitchen closes by the time you check-in. So we wanna look at how Uber Eats for business could help solve that. And Kristen is the expert in The United States here on that solution, so I'll have her walk us through it. Yes. Everyone loves to talk about food, so I'm happy to chat a little bit about Uber Eats and our meal programs. To Will's point, kind of the first problem we try to solve for is that hotel kitchen problem. So as Will said, hotel restaurants close at a certain time. Room service can be expensive and limited. And oftentimes, if you're traveling alone, you don't necessarily want to be going to the hotel bar by yourself or a restaurant by yourself and eating alone. A lot of people wanna turn to delivery. So with Uber Eats, we have over a million merchant options in over 6,000 cities. This makes it very, very easy to just turn to the Uber app and scroll through different cuisine types that we have available, especially if you're in an unknown city. One of my favorite things to do is, especially to Will's point, if I'm coming off of a late flight, I'm pretty much starving by the time I land. So once I get my Uber and I'm headed to the hotel, I'll open up my Eats app, place an order, and basically, hopefully, have it waiting for me when I arrive. So, really just kind of get that luxury travel experience without having to go outside and interact with anyone. But this ties really nicely into our expense integrations. You'll, of course, have that business profile available in the Uber Eats app. So the same way your employees would have a profile toggle on the ride side, it's that same experience, which is great. Basically, all you have to do is charge the meal to your manage business profile. And then with the expense integration, your receipt is sent automatically to your expense platform. So it's waiting for the employee at the end of the month when they submit their expenses. So, again, in compliance with company policies and saves them a ton of time when doing their expense reports. So earlier, I spent a bit of time discussing different vehicle options and providing employees that flexibility. So I wanted to walk through this chart here. Essentially, again, through the dashboard, you're able to kind of create these tiered programs to give different levels of employees access to different vehicle types. So what's pretty common, is basically, for example, manager levels and below. A really common vehicle type is business comfort for your everyday business travel. It's elevated from UberX, but it's still staying in those, you know, kind of cost control mechanisms. Of course, you can use the Uber's or feature with a business comfort vehicle type here. Less occasional or less common for, the manager levels and below is gonna be maybe a business black or black SUV vehicle type. Then maybe for your directors and above in the dashboard, you, of course, wanna give them access to all vehicle types, which include economy and comfort rides. But then what's probably pretty common for them is booking a business black, which you definitely are pretty often using our reserve feature for these trips. And then maybe less common, for them is a black SUV, for example. And then jumping to the right side of the screen, these are our sustainable vehicles. Oftentimes, companies leave these open for everyone to choose. Again, sustainability is a hot topic right now. So these are where your Uber Green and your Comfort Electric vehicle types will come in. And I think we'll jump to q and a. Will, I'll I'll pass it back to you. Yeah. Excellent. Well, again, thank you everybody. We have a couple of questions here. First coming from Brenda. Love this question. How can I get started, with Uber for business for your company? The easiest way, again, with a webinar format is go back to that button, request a demo. This is, again, gonna send a note to your dedicated account agent here. They'll reach out. They'll work to set up some time and walk you through the tools and billing preferences, everything that you could want to know. Next question is from Ashish. How can we increase adoption, ensure employees are fully fully utilizing the platform? Kristen, do you wanna answer that one for Ashish? Yeah. Of course. So basically, we work with our implementation leads and come up with a really tailored communication plan that works best for you with the goal of driving adoption. At time of launch, for example, if you're a new client, we'll ask for an email announcement that's sent to employees along with Uber invitation so that they can opt into the program. But we really recommend either you reaching out to your account manager if you're an existing client. But if you don't have an account manager, again, we recommend using that link in the webinar, and we can get you in touch with with someone from our team. Awesome. And then I apologize. We're running out of time here, but we have, a couple more questions from Taylor and Cher. Both of which, I think, again, they they seem pretty specific. I think your best bet is to go ahead and hit that request the demo. Again, even if you have a directed account manager, it's gonna send a notification so that we can reach out. And if you don't, again, we'll have someone be assigned to reach out and and address those specific questions one off. Again, we wanna thank you everyone for attending today. You're gonna get an emailed copy of this recording here. But, again, if you wanna learn more, we strongly recommend that you follow the get demo button or go to one of the two websites listed here on the screen, and we'll be sure to have an expert reach out and help you walk walk you through the process. Thank you so much.