Uber Offers Mobile Ordering to Tampa Airport Travelers

Uber says it wants to help travelers in Tampa grab a bite before their flight.

The company’s Uber Eats business has joined forces with Tampa International Airport to bring mobile ordering to the millions of visitors and workers who pass through the airport each year, Uber announced in a Tuesday (Mar. 7) news release.

The collaboration makes Tampa International Uber’s first airport partner in the U.S. and comes as food aggregators work to capture a larger share of orders.

“A top pain-point for travelers can be getting their food, drink or other last-minute items quickly when they might have only a few minutes to spare before boarding a flight,” Uber said in the news release. “This frustration is shared by airport staff from flight crews to security officers, who might have only a short lunch break.”

With the partnership, consumers can order ahead and skip the line at more than 20 concession sites at the airport. It also lets members of Uber One — the company’s combined delivery/mobility offering — receive discounts on some orders.

Uber has said recently members of the Uber One program now generate more than a quarter of its gross bookings and 40% of its delivery bookings.

“We are pushing Uber One,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said during an earnings call last month, adding, “you’ll see it on our delivery services. You’ll see it on our mobility services. And we are quite actively continuing to innovate in terms of the benefits that we offer … it creates great stickiness and member retention.”

As PYMNTS has written, aggregators have been busy trying to expand their share of restaurant orders as they lose out to order channels.

The PYMNTS’ study “The 2022 Restaurant Digital Divide: Food Aggregators Find Their Footing,” showed that 20% of respondents reported that they had made their most recent restaurant purchase via digital channels, but only 2.5% had done so via an aggregator. 

In a recent interview with PYMNTS, Kate Green, GrubHub’s vice president, restaurant services and innovation, insisted that third-party channels and direct ordering are not in competition.

“What we’ve seen, too, is that diners are going to make their choice based on where they’re going to want to order, and it’s our job to be able to create the best experiences for those diners and for our restaurant partners, whether that’s on a direct channel or whether that’s on marketplace,” Green said. 

“So we see them really as more complementary than [as] competing channels.”