Uber has always wanted to be more than a ride; now it has reason to hurry
Uber has always wanted to be more than a ride; now it has reason to hurry
Uber 一直想做的不止是打车服务；现在它有了加速的理由
For years, Uber talked about becoming a super app. Then Waymo started picking up passengers in San Francisco, and the conversation grew more urgent. The company has been trying to embed itself inside the AV industry — as a data provider, an investor, and a distribution platform — but the consumer-facing bet may be just as important. 多年来，Uber 一直在谈论成为一款“超级应用”。随后，Waymo 开始在旧金山接载乘客，这使得相关讨论变得更加紧迫。该公司一直试图将自己嵌入自动驾驶（AV）行业——作为数据提供商、投资者和分发平台——但面向消费者的布局可能同样重要。
Two weeks ago, Uber held its annual GO-GET product event in New York and announced something its executives had been circling for a long time: users in the U.S. can now book hotels inside the Uber app, through a partnership with Expedia Group, with access to more than 700,000 properties worldwide. Uber One members — the company’s subscription tier at $9.99 a month — get 20% off a rotating list of 10,000 hotels and 10% back in credits. Vacation rentals through Vrbo will follow later this year, along with restaurant reservations via OpenTable. In the meantime, a “Shop for Me” feature lets users order from stores that aren’t even on the platform. 两周前，Uber 在纽约举办了年度 GO-GET 产品发布会，并宣布了其高管们酝酿已久的一项举措：通过与 Expedia Group 的合作，美国用户现在可以在 Uber 应用内预订酒店，并可访问全球超过 70 万家住宿设施。Uber One 会员（该公司每月 9.99 美元的订阅服务）可享受 1 万家轮换酒店 8 折优惠，并获得 10% 的积分返还。通过 Vrbo 预订度假租赁房源的功能将于今年晚些时候推出，随后还将上线通过 OpenTable 进行餐厅预订的功能。与此同时，“代我购物”（Shop for Me）功能允许用户从甚至未入驻该平台的商店下单。
The announcements, taken together, were the most concrete picture yet of something Uber has been trying to conjure since at least 2019: that an app with 199 million monthly active users could become the app they use for nearly everything. Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber’s CTO, offered the clearest explanation of the company’s thinking at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event late last month in San Francisco. The super app concept has existed for years in India and Southeast Asia, he noted, but U.S. versions have mostly flopped by bolting services onto traffic rather than building toward a reason to stay. 这些公告合在一起，勾勒出了 Uber 自 2019 年以来一直试图实现的目标：让一款拥有 1.99 亿月活跃用户的应用，成为用户处理几乎所有事务的平台。Uber 首席技术官 Praveen Neppalli Naga 上月底在旧金山举行的 TechCrunch StrictlyVC 活动上，对公司的思路给出了最清晰的解释。他指出，超级应用的概念在印度和东南亚已经存在多年，但美国的版本大多以失败告终，因为它们只是在流量上简单叠加服务，而不是建立用户留存的理由。
His answer to what fits? Membership. Every new category — food, groceries, now hotels — gives someone another reason to pay for Uber One. “I take Uber, go to the airport, take a flight, take another Uber, go to a hotel, go to a restaurant,” he said. “There is a flow you can actually build into it.” 他认为什么才是关键？会员制。每一个新的品类——餐饮、杂货，现在是酒店——都为用户提供了支付 Uber One 的新理由。“我打 Uber 去机场，坐飞机，再打一辆 Uber，去酒店，去餐厅，”他说，“你可以围绕这个流程进行构建。”
Flights are not available yet, though Naga didn’t rule them out. Uber tried flight booking in Europe years ago without success. “First let’s get the hotel things done,” he said. Financial services sound like a possibility too — Uber already offers a debit card to drivers in Mexico — though how far that goes, or when, remains unclear. Said Naga: “Never say never.” 目前尚不支持机票预订，尽管 Naga 并没有排除这种可能性。Uber 多年前曾在欧洲尝试过机票预订，但并未成功。“先让我们把酒店业务做好，”他说。金融服务听起来也是一种可能——Uber 已经在墨西哥为司机提供借记卡——尽管这能走多远或何时实现尚不清楚。Naga 表示：“永远别说永远。”
Uber isn’t alone in this race. Airbnb, arguably the company most directly threatened by Uber’s hotel push, announced its own transportation ambitions in late March — a partnership with Welcome Pickups to offer airport transfers in 125 cities across Asia, Europe, and Latin America, structured to keep users inside the Airbnb app rather than sending them to Uber. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has spent three years promising to turn X into an “everything app” in the WeChat mold, and is now nearing what he describes as a long-stated goal: X Money, a banking and payments platform built inside the social network, is expected to launch publicly soon. X claims 500 million monthly active users. Uber 在这场竞赛中并不孤单。Airbnb 可以说是受 Uber 进军酒店业威胁最直接的公司，它在 3 月底宣布了自己的交通业务雄心——与 Welcome Pickups 合作，在亚洲、欧洲和拉丁美洲的 125 个城市提供机场接送服务，旨在将用户留在 Airbnb 应用内，而不是让他们转向 Uber。与此同时，埃隆·马斯克花了三年时间承诺将 X 打造成微信模式的“万能应用”，目前正接近他所描述的长期目标：X Money，一个内置于社交网络中的银行和支付平台，预计很快将公开发布。X 声称拥有 5 亿月活跃用户。
The big question is how many super apps the American market will actually support. WeChat works in China partly because the alternative was a patchwork of inferior options. In the U.S., people already have apps they like for most of what Uber wants to do. Getting them to consolidate inside a single platform requires either a compelling reason — Uber One’s discounts, say — or a seamless enough experience that switching feels worth it. 最大的问题是美国市场到底能容纳多少个超级应用。微信在中国之所以成功，部分原因是当时的其他选择都是零散且体验较差的。而在美国，人们对于 Uber 想要涉足的大多数领域，已经有了自己心仪的应用。要让他们整合到一个单一平台，要么需要一个令人信服的理由（比如 Uber One 的折扣），要么需要足够无缝的体验，让用户觉得切换平台是值得的。
Uber’s bet is that its installed base is the moat. Its users have already handed over a credit card. Convincing them to book a hotel, or order from a store they’d never find on Uber Eats, is an easy lift compared with convincing them to download something new. Its most recent earnings, reported a few days ago, suggest Uber Eats may be the strongest argument for that thesis: delivery revenue grew 34% year over year in the first quarter, to $5.07 billion, making it easily the fastest-growing part of the business and pulling almost even with mobility in gross bookings. Uber 的赌注在于其庞大的装机量就是护城河。它的用户已经绑定了信用卡。与说服他们下载一个新应用相比，说服他们预订酒店或从 Uber Eats 上从未见过的商店下单要容易得多。几天前公布的最新财报显示，Uber Eats 可能是这一论点最有力的证据：第一季度外卖收入同比增长 34%，达到 50.7 亿美元，使其成为业务中增长最快的部分，在总预订量上几乎与移动出行持平。
Uber’s stock is still down about 8% from a year ago — suggesting that Wall Street isn’t fully convinced. But the company says that 50 million people are now paying for Uber One, and together they account for roughly half the company’s total bookings. Uber 的股价较一年前仍下跌了约 8%，这表明华尔街尚未完全被说服。但该公司表示，目前有 5000 万人正在为 Uber One 付费，他们贡献了公司总预订量的大约一半。