Uber Is Eyeing Travel Booking

A patent application filed June 22 and posted online Christmas Eve quietly revealed how broadly Uber may extend its reach into the online travel space.

The San Francisco-based ride-hailing and sharing economy app continues to rampage through the market share of private car providers and city taxi services despite questions of legality. And it literally drew a picture for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that showed a potential all-in-one app that would start with the airline booking process and provide what the corporate travel industry has termed a “door-to-door” trip itinerary that includes ground transportation to and from the airport, naturally, but also flight and hotel.

Those are just the basics. The app plan suggested real-time trip-progress monitoring to enable Uber Travel to make recommendations and send messages triggered by specific actions and conditions. According to the patent application, the mobile app would also estimate the time it takes the user to travel through airport processes (think: check-in, security, bag reclaim, etc.) and message reminders about optimizing time, particularly in terms of a scheduled Uber pickup.

It’s important to remember that, for now, this is a sketch of the user interface and a workflow chart, and that Uber currently enjoys a list of cities—some, major business markets—that disallow or surcharge pickups at their airports. But the bulwarks are falling, with Los Angeles, Chicago and, most recently, Seattle lifting some restrictions. Clearing these hurdles will quicken Uber’s forward march.

Players like KDS Neo and Amadeus’ Microsoft Outlook integration should keep an eye on Uber’s next steps in the "last mile" space. Corporate programs stand to lose their travelers should grassroots adoption of an Uber Travel app explode like the basic ride-hailing app.

Then again, patent application-based speculation about Apple’s plans for iTravel proved overblown, with vanishingly few developments since it filed with the U.S. Patent Office in 2010. But as a technology that is already disrupting the corporate travel space, Uber feels different.