Grab PH testing ‘group rides’ concept for holiday rush

Grab Philippines is testing a new feature that allows users to set up “group rides” by inviting up to three more users to add multiple drop-off points within a single booking to be launched in December, in time for the anticipated holiday-related traffic.

At the sidelines of Grab’s “Asenso Center” launch on Thursday in Marikina City, Grab Philippines country head Ronald Roda said the “group rides” feature is “one of the things we’re pushing this Christmas.”

He said the “group rides” concept is similar to the group order feature on GrabFood, in which one user can invite others to join a single order.

“We have the transport version of that now… I’ll take an example, if I want to go to a cemetery and there’s four of us going then I can create a group ride where the car will pass through each of us and then go to the cemetery, or vice versa, you all ride from the cemetery and then you drop off in your houses,” Roda said.

“We have not fully advertised it… But it’s been up for a while this year. We haven’t advertised because we have been optimizing driver behavior and routing,” the Grab Philippines country chief said.

The “group rides” feature is only available in Metro Manila.

“So we’ll try our best to get it out fully running by December,” Roda said.

He added that Grab will offer incentives to its drivers who will accept group rides.

“Internally in Grab, we kind of subsidize them… Otherwise, they won’t do it. So, there’s more effort. So, from a driver’s standpoint, we just need to make sure we compensate for effort,” he said. — JMA, GMA Integrated News