Uber Travel no threat to Serko: expert

Earlier this year, Uber announced its new Uber Travel capabilities that would allow users to use the app to “organise your hotel, flight, and restaurant reservations all in one place”.

The ride-sharing giant has expanded this offering to 10,000 cities worldwide, and some in NZ may have noticed they too have access to the option in the mobile app.

The company is adding more functionality, with train and bus rides joining its list of services.

If there is some familiarity, it’s because a company closer to home is already seeing success as a travel management platform: Serko.

Not a case of copy-kill

Copy-kill is an industry term for when a more established company builds a product that functions similarly to a smaller company looking to disrupt a market.

Usually, the strategy leads to the decline or demise of that smaller company. One example is Apple’s Airtags causing strife for Tile.

This is not what is happening with Serko and Uber, Jarden analyst and vice president of equity research Guy Hooper told BusinessDesk.

“The global unmanaged travel market is large, and I suspect most major consumer-facing travel companies will look to either enter the market or expand their product offering to capture more of this market.” Travel super-app

Hooper described this move as developing a travel super-app. A super-app offers a variety of services from within one app, and has become increasingly popular, especially in markets like southeast Asia, where Grab and Line have dominated.

“Serko is entering and competing in this market through its JV [joint venture] with Booking.com, Booking. com for Business ... Serko’s aspirational goal is to build out a global marketplace of travel content, removing friction and providing greater visibility to the customer throughout the travel journey.

“As Serko expands its travel marketplace, the appeal of the tool to the unmanaged [companies self-booking] travel sector grows.”

He added that Serko has recently shown the value of its product in the market with Booking.com taking a 5 per cent stake in the firm, leading the market in Australia and NZ, and a major deal with Visa that helped its travel manager win a major award.

Hooper highlighted the size of the travel market and noted that Booking. com has made an array of acquisitions in recent years to build the company’s share of the huge global travel market.

The implication is that Serko, with the backing of Booking.com, is on track to become the Uber of unmanaged travel.

Serko declined to comment on Uber Travel’s expansion.