With the in­flux of vis­i­tors and tourists in T&T and peo­ple not want­i­ng to dri­ve to var­i­ous fetes and oth­er events for the Car­ni­val, ride-hail­ing com­pa­nies are see­ing a ma­jor spike in their ser­vice.

MyTripTT, which pro­vides both ride hail­ing and pri­vate trans­port ser­vices, has seen 100 per cent in­crease in re­quests for the sea­son.

CEO of MyTripTT, Richard Corn­wall, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, said he be­lieves ride-hail­ing and pri­vate trans­port com­pa­nies are strug­gling to keep up with the de­mand, just like ma­jor ho­tels, who have been booked out since 2024.

Corn­wall, who said MyTripTT be­gan three years ago, said the dif­fer­ence with his com­pa­ny’s ser­vice is that it has a pre-book­ing plat­form, not an on-de­mand plat­form.

He said al­most all the ride-hail­ing com­pa­nies in T&T start­ed off with a call on-de­mand, which means you have to ping or call for a ride and a dri­ver in the per­son’s ge­o­graph­i­cal area may or may not re­spond. That sys­tems was meant to take care of can­cel­la­tions.

“What would have hap­pened is that peo­ple could have planned their ride and can­celled it on you. Uber and a num­ber of these oth­er ride shares would have brought it down to a po­si­tion of zone, or ge­o­graph­i­cal, and for you to sub­mit for that ride clos­er to when you’re ready, the chances of you can­celling would have been very min­i­mal at that par­tic­u­lar point. That sce­nario works well when you have, in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance, sev­er­al dri­vers, a litany of dri­vers, and there­fore that will ap­ply,” said.

About MyTripTT, Corn­wall said it can do same-day pick-ups with a min­i­mum of 24 to 48 hours no­tice.

“But it all de­pends,” said Corn­wall, “The same day would be a min­i­mum of two to three hours giv­en cir­cum­stances, mean­ing if it’s a day where there’s heavy traf­fic, for in­stance, with­in the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, if we tell you a min­i­mum of two to three hours, if you’re call­ing from the West or Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and we’re re­spond­ing from the of­fice in Port of Spain, you could do that with­in the hour,” he ex­plained.

In terms of the start­ing price for the ride it is $45, com­pared to oth­er ride shares which be­gin at $23.

“With MyTripTT, one cus­tomer can book one ser­vice and pay $45 de­pend­ing on the dis­tance. So as high as $2,000, $2,800, $3,000, $3,005, which are ac­tu­al book­ings on the plat­form. When you jux­ta­pose that against the oth­er plat­forms, a $500 ser­vice on MyTripTT’s plat­form would be $25 or $23 on oth­er plat­forms, If we do the math, you’re talk­ing about maybe 10 dri­ves with 10 dif­fer­ent cus­tomers. Our ser­vice providers are much bet­ter re­mu­ner­at­ed and the dif­fer­ence with our plat­form is what the provider makes dai­ly goes to them with­out a 20 to 30 per cent de­duc­tion. We are like Net­flix, you just have to pay a sub­scrip­tion fee,” Corn­wall said.

He not­ed that the range of high-end ve­hi­cles sep­a­rates them, in terms of who does busi­ness with the com­pa­ny as op­posed to the oth­er ser­vices.

TT RideShare Ltd man­ag­ing di­rec­tor/ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Dwight House­nd re­port­ed that re­cent da­ta analy­sis showed a re­mark­able in­crease in new user ac­tiv­i­ty and cus­tomer us­age dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.  

House­nd said over the last three weeks, the com­pa­ny ob­served a rise in the dai­ly av­er­age of new users. The in­crease has been rough­ly 300 per cent above the dai­ly av­er­age new user on­board­ing in Jan­u­ary and be­fore. 

“We have ob­served an in­crease in book­ings, align­ing with the ex­pect­ed peak trends of this fes­tive sea­son. No­tably, we have seen a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in trips be­tween 10 pm and 6 am com­pared to the same pe­ri­od out­side of this sea­son,” said House­nd. 

As it re­lates to the fares, he said it starts at $28 for a 4-pas­sen­ger ride, while base fare is $16.00 and $1.10 per minute. 

On how many dri­vers TT RideShare em­ploys, he said “Dri­ver part­ners are in­de­pen­dent op­er­a­tors with a non-ex­clu­sive part­ner­ship on our plat­form. While I will not state the to­tal num­bers of reg­is­tered dri­vers, we have around 1,800 ac­tive dri­vers with an av­er­age of 70 per cent of those dri­vers dri­ving month­ly.” 

With crime in­creas­ing, House­nd not­ed that de­spite the com­pa­ny’s lack of dis­cus­sion on the top­ic in the pub­lic do­main, they are very com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment of its process­es and sys­tems for mon­i­tor­ing, in­ves­ti­gat­ing, and re­port­ing.  

“The sys­tems for op­ti­miz­ing our da­ta mod­els, specif­i­cal­ly our se­cu­ri­ty seg­men­ta­tion, is top pri­or­i­ty with our strate­gic pri­or­i­ty.” 

All­Ri­Di, which is an­oth­er ride hail­ing plat­form, has seen a Car­ni­val surge as well, es­pe­cial­ly with­in the Port of Spain area, with an in­crease of 25 per cent.

This was con­firmed by Leisel Dou­glas, the com­pa­ny’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor.

On whether the com­pa­ny had to hire more dri­vers, due to the de­mand, Dou­glas said “We are con­stant­ly on­board­ing dri­vers as this is a process that takes some time due to our re­quire­ments in meet­ing our safe­ty con­trols. In an­tic­i­pa­tion of the Car­ni­val sea­son, our team has been pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to dri­ver on­board­ing for the past four months.”

She out­lined that all­Ri­Di has enough dri­vers to ser­vice its cus­tomer base and the dri­vers en­joy the flex­i­bil­i­ty of choos­ing how they work.

“As such, we have full-time and part-time dri­vers as well as those who en­gage sea­son­al­ly.”

As it per­tains to the fare, Dou­glas said be­gins at $26, which the com­pa­ny be­lieves is the most af­ford­able on the rideshare mar­ket.

In ad­di­tion, she not­ed that through many part­ner­ships, the com­pa­ny of­ten of­fers the added ben­e­fits of dis­count­ed rides.

With an in­crease of cars on the road for the sea­son, the ques­tion was posed as to whether it is a chal­lenge for the com­pa­ny to ful­fill the high de­mand, Dou­glas in­di­cat­ed that as can be ex­pect­ed, its dri­vers are try­ing their best to sat­is­fy the in­creased de­mand for rides while nav­i­gat­ing the in­crease in traf­fic.

Food­DROP in­crease

Lind­say Williams, prod­uct man­ag­er of DROP Caribbean Ltd said this Car­ni­val brought a wave of new cus­tomers to the app this sea­son.

“Our strate­gic Visa part­ner­ship placed our brand in front of vis­i­tors through eye-catch­ing air­port dis­plays and spe­cial de­liv­ery codes tucked in­to mas­quer­ad­er pack­ages. This part­ner­ship led to an in­crease in or­ders, app down­loads, and over­all plat­form en­gage­ment.”

To keep pace with de­mand, Willams said the com­pa­ny launched tar­get­ed dri­ver in­cen­tives that suc­cess­ful­ly boost­ed its de­liv­ery ca­pac­i­ty by 10 per cent+ in high-de­mand ar­eas.

While the in­flux of vis­i­tors and road con­ges­tion cre­at­ed some de­liv­ery chal­lenges, Williams said the op­er­a­tions team has been quick to adapt, work­ing with dri­vers to op­ti­mise routes dur­ing this busy pe­ri­od.

“With 500+ restau­rants and re­tail­ers on our plat­form, Food­DROP con­tin­ues strength­en­ing its po­si­tion in the re­gion’s dig­i­tal or­der­ing space. To­ba­go re­mains on our radar as we con­sid­er fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties,” the prod­uct man­ag­er added.