Ola introduced its new service, Ola Outstation, in May 2016 and since then has been operating rides between two different cities. The trip duration could be set easily and one could get these inter-city rides with the click of a button.
However, one thing that was causing problems to the users was that your ride is always billed as a round trip. Expected time of arrival is maximum 2hrs & may vary as the driver may go home first to get ready for the trip. In addition to this, Ola only accepted cash for payments.
Ola has thought about these restrictions, and to make the rides more flexible and attractive to users, the company is rolling out ‘One-way’ outstation trips, that will not cover the round trip expense. This service is growing 50% month over month and it was high time Ola did something to improve it.
This service is currently applicable to Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune it will be scaled to other cities in the next two months.
“The number of cities are set to grow substantially in the next two months…Within 5 months of its launch and presence in over 45 cities, Ola Outstation has witnessed a month-on- month growth of 50 per cent,” Ola said in a statement.
The best part about this is, if you return to your base location, you will be charged on the basis of a round trip. So you don’t have to worry about booking another Ola Outstation once you’re at your destination.
Will this attract more customers?
The base fares on routes like Ahmedabad to Mumbai, Delhi to Jaipur, Chennai to Bengaluru and Pune to Mumbai are economical, and pretty much comparable to an airline ticket. This comes in very handy when you don’t have much time to spare and need to be at your destination in very less time.
However, travel a little further and the prices will increase, breaching the flight tickets territory and in addition to this, you have to pay for tolls, taxes and parking. All in all, this intercity travel is definitely very convenient between cities than are four to five hours drive from each other.
Again, if you’re carrying a lot of luggage and prefer the road, then this update will keep your wallets heavy and give you a sense of relief. More often than not, riders have to take a cab from one city to another on one day and back on another day. This saves them the money for a round trip and offers them more flexibility between the two cities.
Ola has been very keen on developing new services and products like Outstation, Rentals and Lux to take on Uber, that doesn’t offer any of these services. Outstation is more affordable now and this should give you enough reasons to try it out now.
Source: ETauto
