Nowadays, people live with the internet and with their mobile phones and the acceptance rate of living on the palm of your hands. So goes with your daily life going to work and going home. The convenience of hailing a ride with GRAB, gives peace of mind, convenience and safety.
Based on an article by Businessweek, 19% of commuters in the Philippines use ride-hailing apps which is twice the number of users in other Southeast Asian countries based on a study conducted by Boston Consulting Group, Inc. This means the acceptance rate in the Philippines is really high creating a very high demand.
In a recent article by ABS-CBN, Brian Cu, Country Manager of Grab Philippines explains that 35,000 grab cars isn’t enough to meet the 600,000 requests daily. Only 53 percent of passengers get a ride on their first booking attempt, which goes down to 37 percent on average during peak hours.
The influx of users has created an overflow gives us a low probability to get a booking especially during those peak hours. GRAB has continuous driver skills and training programs, and also incentive programs that lets drivers keep on getting more rides and bookings and make grab riders happy. This is one of the commitments of a #BetterGrabPH in 100 days.
The bottomline is that there aren’t enough current grab cars to supply the needs of the many. Though the LTO has currently approved 5 more ride-hailing app companies, they are only going to facilitate and approve TNV operators from the pending applicants who were temporarily suspended last year.
The LTFRB said it will only accept applicants included in the master lists prepared by Uber and Grab, and will not accept “walk-in” applicants. It will take around two months to process and approve franchise applications but the LTFRB assured that applicants will be given a “provisional authority” to operate while their franchise applications are being processed. Regulators are looking to give franchises to around 65,000 drivers in Metro Manila. as reported by Joyce Balancio of ABS-CBN News.
To sum it up, 35,000 existing grab cars plus 65,000 new provisional authorities in 2 months from the pending applicants will only give us a total of 100,000 TNV cars by 3rd quarter of this year. Thus, it will only be serving 16% of the total demand of 600,000 hopeful users of ride-hailing apps.
I hope that the LTFRB will realize these numbers and be able to come with a workable solution on how to meet the demands of the riding public.
