Uber for Business Goes International

I hear more and more people talking about trying out Uber transportation and most seem to like it. So far most of my experiences have been pretty good. Of course, Uber is not available in all U.S. cities but that is not stopping them from expanding internationally.

Hard to believe it was only a couple months ago when I was speaking with the company about a new service called Uber for Business. They were just launching in the States with a couple pilot projects in Europe. At the same time, they announced a partnership with Concur to help employees manage their expenses in one location, giving them seamless accounting of their travel expenses.

Sounds like their experiment worked because as Uber just announced that their service is offered in over 200 cities in a whopping 45 countries around the globe. By any measure, this is amazing growth.

Uber for Business is different than the regular Uber in that companies can set up corporate accounts. This makes it very easy for employees to continuing booking their travel on their apps while the companies arrange the payment.

Uber certainly has had its difficult moments. Many cities do not like their lack of control or payment of fees that are required by taxi services. In addition, Germany ruled a month ago that Uber is illegal there. Nevertheless, Uber plans to continue operations in that country.

And headlines like this recent event don’t help either. Last week, an Orlando woman called police to say her Uber driver tried to put his hand down her shirt. In fairness, the same thing might happen with a taxi driver but the takeaway from this is Uber simply has to do a better job vetting their drivers, while travel managers figure out how Uber and similar companies fit into the corporate travel policy.