Uber has taken its first major step toward becoming a “super app” in the United States, adding hotel bookings to its platform and signalling a broader push into travel, hospitality and retail services.
At the company’s GO‑GET event in New York on 27 April, Uber announced a partnership with Expedia Group that allows U.S. users to reserve rooms in more than 700,000 properties worldwide directly within the Uber app. The rollout includes a rotating selection of 10,000 hotels that Uber One members – the firm’s $9.99‑a‑month subscription – can book at a 20 percent discount, with 10 percent of the spend returned as Uber credits. The company said it will extend the offering later in the year to include vacation rentals through Vrbo and restaurant reservations via OpenTable. A “Shop for Me” feature also lets riders order from retailers that are not otherwise listed on Uber’s marketplace.
These moves crystallise a vision Uber has been pursuing since at least 2019: to leverage its 199 million monthly active users as a one‑stop platform for everyday needs. In a recent interview at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC conference in San Francisco, Uber chief technology officer Praveen Neppalli Naga explained that the company sees membership as the glue that can bind disparate services together. “I take Uber, go to the airport, take a flight, take another Uber, go to a hotel, go to a restaurant,” he said, describing a seamless travel flow that could be built around Uber One.
While flights are not yet part of the itinerary, Naga said Uber is focused on perfecting the hotel experience before expanding further. The firm has previously experimented with flight booking in Europe without success, and it has not ruled out future forays into financial services – Uber already issues debit cards to drivers in Mexico – but timelines remain undefined.
Uber’s ambitions place it in direct competition with other players courting the American super‑app market. Airbnb, whose core business is threatened by Uber’s hotel push, announced a partnership with Welcome Pickups to provide airport transfers in 125 cities across Asia, Europe and Latin America, keeping the transaction inside the Airbnb app. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s X platform is close to launching “X Money,” a banking and payments suite that would extend the social network’s functionality into everyday commerce.
The key question for Uber and its rivals is whether U.S. consumers will consolidate their digital lives into a single app. In China, WeChat succeeded because alternatives were fragmented and often inferior. In the United States, users already have entrenched choices for rides, food, travel and payments. Uber hopes that its large, credit‑card‑enabled user base and the discounts attached to Uber One will be enough of an incentive to try new services without downloading additional apps.
Early financial results lend some weight to that hypothesis. In the first quarter of 2024 Uber reported a 34 percent year‑over‑year rise in delivery revenue, reaching $5.07 billion – the fastest‑growing segment of the business and almost equal to its mobility bookings. The company now says roughly 50 million customers subscribe to Uber One, accounting for about half of its total bookings.
Wall Street remains cautious. Uber’s share price is still about 8 percent lower than a year ago, suggesting investors are waiting to see whether the super‑app strategy can translate into sustainable growth. For now, the hotel partnership marks the most tangible manifestation of Uber’s long‑running quest to become a multi‑service platform, and the next months will show whether the model can gain traction with an increasingly fragmented American digital audience.
