Addison Lee backs restaurants, airlines and travel agents to fend off Uber

Addison Lee has made significant movements in 2015 to keep the business in fifth gear. In April, the private car service acquired Camden-based rival Cyclone as part of a “continued investment to deliver best-in-class experiences for our customers”.

A month later and Addison Lee revealed the takeover of Climate Cars, an eco-friendly car service that would bolster its new owner’s fleet of 350 hybrid vehicles, in a bid to go green.

The firm has now launched an API (application programme interface) to provide more booking options to customers, partners and affiliates. The open software will allow third parties to integrate the means to book Addison Lee vehicles from any of their websites or mobile apps.

This will effectively generate more sales for Addison Lee, while it will in turn help to satisfy the needs of businesses looking to simplify consumers’ lives.

Features will include:

• Access to book Addison Lee premier car services
• Upfront journey time quotes
• Upfront price quotes before booking
• Payments by credit card or cash
• Ready to deploy booking widget

Branding it as “seamless end-to-end booking experience” for travellers and diners, specifics of partners by names haven’t been revealed yet, but the firm looks set to target restaurants, major airlines, transport and travel firms, as well as events companies.

Read more on the car industry:

• The “Simply Clever” approach Skoda has to hijack customers from Ford and Vauxhall
• TfL and Greater London Authority plan for one million London car club members by 2025
• Tailing motoring giant BMW’s race into the UK’s sharing economy

“We have always been innovative in our use of technology and the launch of Addison Lee’s API is another step we’ve taken to provide the best possible service to our customers, partners and affiliates, many of whom are already planning to integrate our service into their own websites and apps,” said Peter Ingram, CTO at Addison Lee.

“Our business is continuing to grow globally with new fleets in almost every major city, so we’re excited to be opening up our service and making this available through the applications and websites customers are already using, in addition to our own.”

Addison Lee’s head of marketing and product innovation Nick Constantinou previously said the firm is “excited to lock horns [with Uber] and see what we can do”. As such, the API launch follows criticism that Uber faced after tripling its fares during the tube strike, which resulted in on-demand black taxi service Gett lowering prices.

By Zen Terrelonge

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