40% of customers expected to take more cabs for leisure, pointing to the pent up demand to make up for everyone's missed months of travel

Tuesday, 11 May 2021

minicabit.com, Britain’s largest and most visited cab comparison site, is primed to drive more bookings for local cab operators across an even wider footprint of the UK as nationwide travel restrictions begin to ease.

minicabit’s app was the first to win offers on BBC’s Dragons’ Den. It has seen its demand patterns fluctuate since the first impact of Covid-19, with a significant increase across the UK for regional cab journeys, particularly for travellers embarking on ‘staycations’. Trips to and from rail stations now account for 34% of minicabit’s overall searches, and its average booked fare has increased from GBP42 pre-Covid to GBP57 currently. Over 70% of minicabit’s 800 Cab Operator partners are based outside Greater London, including many rural locations.

At the same time, just as the world starts to prepare for travel to return again soon, Booking.com, one of the world's leading digital travel marketplaces, is expanding the coverage of its pre-booked taxi service around the UK via a partnership with minicabit. minicabit is now one of Booking.com’s largest pre-booked taxi partners in the UK and their customers can pre-book cabs up to 12 months in advance for travel to and from airport and transport hub locations.

minicabit, also recently ran a survey of its customers about how cab bookings might change post-lockdown. The findings make for interesting reading :

• half of customers said they would take the same amount of cabs for work, now with 69% taking them from their home rather than their office, reflecting the shift to remote working

• 40% of customers expected to take more cabs for leisure, pointing to the pent up demand to make up for everyone's missed months of travel

• for out of town trips in particular, taking the train is still the most popular mode followed by cab and then coach.

The online platform has spent the recent lockdown retooling and preparing its platform for new and exciting capabilities which will benefit a wide mix of Private Hire Operators. First up, even though minicabit’s portal has long enabled fleets with no technology to gain online bookings, it is now integrated with nine cab dispatch software systems. Consequently, more Cab and Chauffeur fleets around the UK can now instantly accommodate minicabit bookings within their existing workflow to get minicabit.com and chauffeurit bookings on their screens.

Amer Hasan, CEO of minicabit, said “After a rollercoaster year for the cab sector, we’re really excited about how our new platform capabilities can help local Cab Operators bounce back as they enter this new normal over the Spring and Summer.”

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NOTES TO EDITORS

About minicabit

minicabit.com is the UK’s largest online cab aggregation platform, enabling fixed quotes set by Private Hire operators across Britain to be compared and booked up to 12 months in advance. minicabit has registered over 800 licensed Private Hire Operators, and enables bookings in over 550 towns & cities across the UK. Rather than using one fleet’s metered price, minicabit’s innovative business model presents the widest number of quotes from both the journey’s start and end destinations, increasing choice for customers, and reach for local Private Hire operators.

minicabit is also the UK’s highest rated cab service platform on Trustpilot, and is the official Private Hire booking platform for many top travel brands, including London Heathrow Airport and Visit Britain Shop – the official shop of the British Tourism Board. minicabit was the first app ever to win offers on BBC’s Dragons’ Den programme, and now counts the international mobile operator Telefonica as one of its investment partners. Recently part of the Government-backed Intelligent Mobility Accelerator, minicabit has won many awards over the years, most recently ‘Best Ground Transport company’ at the 2020 Travolution ‘travel tech’ Awards, a category it also won in 2019 and 2016.

For more info and discount offers for journalists, contact media@minicabit.com, Tel: +44 (0) 207 129 7070