TECH PREDICTIONS FOR 2024
By Amer Hasan, CEO of minicabit
minicabit.com
A happy 2024 to you, which the Chinese Zodiac describes as the Year of the Dragon. Indeed, things should get a bit hotter this year, not just with ongoing climate change but the fact that a third of the world’s population will be voting their current governments in or out across over 40 national elections!
I always add a caveat as to how difficult it is to predict the tech changes in our sector. This year, I’m at least comforted by minicabit, Britain’s largest cab aggregator, of which I’m CEO, recently winning two awards at the Travolution travel industry awards for ‘Best Ground Transport’ company and ‘Best Technology team’, so at least our tech credentials have been validated. More importantly, my predictions for last year spotlighted how the just-launched ChatGPT was being hailed as the next wave of technology – I certainly got that one right!
Whilst there’s been a lot of noise about ChatGPT and the type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) behind it, Generative AI, I expect its presence day to day will be relatively incremental this year but much more impactful over, say, a five-year time horizon, at a business and indeed societal level.
For instance, you can now see the likes of Amazon using Generative AI to display a useful three line summary of all the user reviews about a product, saving the user the time and hassle of analysing pages of reviews. Hence, you may start to see the back office tools you use for your business gradually integrate AI to help the tool and hence your business work smarter, such as your accountancy software or banking service.
For its part, minicabit has launched ‘Top Routes’, a powerful (and free!) tool for any size cab operator on its platform to get a live feed of the most popular routes and prices being booked in its area. Over time, this can be further scaled by AI to support the surge in the number of cab fleets that have joined minicabit post- pandemic, as it closes in on a record 1,000 cab operator partners UK-wide on its platform.
Elsewhere, the cab aggregator landscape is evolving. Uber shut down its Local Cab aggregator offering in smaller cities around the UK at the end of last year
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though still leaving its sizeable presence in the larger UK cities. However, Uber has been following through on its mission to be the ‘Amazon of transport’, offering a diverse range of transport options beyond cabs, e-scooters, bikes and delivery to now car rental and train tickets.
Uber has also been trialling offering hotels and flights which could signal two outcomes – first, that Uber is transforming into a customer travel/transport data platform that happens to offer cabs, increasingly bolstered by in-house advertising revenues (as Amazon is) from third party brands running ads in the Uber app relevant to the time of day and location the customer is in; second, that as Uber competes for the spend traditionally placed with travel platforms and agencies, the latter will step up to retain their customers and their data.
At the same time, there will be more collaboration with cab aggregators particularly by the largest fleets and private hire operator groups which recognise that the best aggregators can bring revenues from sources they can’t easily reach, in minicabit’s case, focusing on high value bookings with average £70+ fares. I also expect the smallest fleets will increasingly adopt dispatch systems that can help digitise the management of their cab bookings, a valuable efficiency.
Finally, whilst early local trials of autonomous cabs and flying taxis means wider adoption is still a decade away, the increased rollout of electric vehicle models and charging points will continue despite the current uncertainty over green motoring policies and cost of living conditions. But what is always certain is Britain’s demand for cabs, given we spend more on cabs than flights, hotels, trains, buses and car rental put together.
Here’s to a great 2024! JANUARY 2024 PHTM
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