Hello, Amer here, minicabit’s founder and CEO. As if 2015 couldn’t have been any busier for minicabit, we outdid ourselves in 2016! Here are just some of the highlights :
January – March
As the official cab partner for Heathrow Airport, we deepened our partnership in 2 areas. Firstly, we launched chauffeurit to enable customers to book specifically Executive and Premium Executive cars, now with even higher service standards. We then collaborated with an eye to everyone’s future, not just that of the cab industry, where we jointly commissioned a YouGov poll on customers’ preference for zero emission cabs. The findings were positive and so minicabit started offering the ability to book zero emission cabs, starting with Tesla’s. This was all part of our mission to offer you the broadest choice of cab operators, beyond offering great prices and quality of service.
With another eye on the future, the way we order services will gradually expand beyond desktops and mobiles to other types of devices. And so when we were invited by Apple to launch a truly UK wide cab app for their new Watch, we embraced the opportunity to further innovate head on!
Meanwhile, in the here and now, we were delighted that the Guardian chose to name minicabit’s app as a top 10 app for saving you money. At the same time, we were pleased to partner with Skyscanner, the online travel innovator, who integrated our cab quotes on their website.
April – June
minicabit was featured on the BBC again, this time not in front of the Dragons but on BBC TV World News, discussing our role in the fast transforming cab space.
We could also see more Cab Operators joining minicabit were offering diverse types of cabs, from those that have zero emissions to those that take pets (which don’t have zero emissions!). So we introduced a dynamic filter to make it easy for you to choose.
Elsewhere, we saw that 1 in 5 of our cab trips are taken for business, whether a big corporate in London or a small business in a regional business park. Since we were seeing travel managers increasingly booking cabs for their teams and clients, we launched minicabit for Business to make it even easier to book.
And given our penchant for picking up the odd award here and there, we were thrilled to beat 250 other entrants to win the TV Star competition, with a prize of free TV advertising airtime.
July – September
As we entered the peak summer travel season, minicabit commissioned a YouGov survey which highlighted how some customers were spending disproportionately on airport transfers, an area which minicabit’s price comparison service easily addresses.
And we ended the summer with a flying start, teaming up with our new partners at Ascot racecourse to offer a chance to win free tickets and a cab ride to the Red Bull Air Race.
October – December
Having won a competition for a free TV ad campaign, we launched our first ever TV advert where we wanted to highlight how easy and straightforward it is to book. What better way to bring this to real life than through the one item you most often find in a cab – an air freshener. Except minicabit goes further with a talking air freshener!
Jumping from the small screen to the big screen, minicabit teamed up with Sony Pictures during Halloween for the release of their new Ghostbusters film on DVD, turning their famed Ecto-1 car into a cab for a day. The car turned quite a few heads when driven around central London, though don’t expect it to turn up in our search results anytime soon. And following a year of interesting competition prizes, we ended it with a chance to win a trip to New York.
But we were thrilled to end the year on a high where minicabit won the Travolution Award for ‘Best on the road’, a recognition of travel technology players in the ground transport space.
It was fantastic to see the fruits of my team’s labour in the spotlight, and so I’d like to thank them alongside our suppliers, partners, Cab Operators and customers for what we achieved in 2016.
And finally, no round up would be complete without wondering about the longest single cab trip taken via minicabit. In 2014, it was from Newcastle to London; in 2015, it was from Snowdonia (in North Wales) to London…and in 2016, it was from Bournemouth to Leeds. Let’s see what trip the reach of minicabit’s UK wide network will unlock in 2017…
