Uber is in the hotel business now, thanks in part to AI

Uber customers in the United States can now make hotel reservations directly through the app, one of the new features announced Wednesday that goes beyond the company’s original mission and digs deeper into users’ lives.

Uber made the hotel reservation announcement Wednesday at its lavish annual Go-Get event in New York City. At launch, Uber customers will have access to more than 700,000 hotels worldwide through a partnership with Expedia Group, the travel company that Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi led for 12 years.

Uber said vacation rentals from startup Vrbo will be added to the app later this year.

And to sell more customers on their Uber One subscription, Uber said members will get a 20% discount at a list of 10,000 hotels when they book into the program. Members will also receive 10% in Uber Credits on all bookings.

“We are no longer a ride-hailing app, or two apps, or (a) family of ride-hailing apps,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said during the company’s announcement.

“Uber is now an app for everything, where you can go, you can find and now you can travel,” he said.

Hotel reservations, a new AI-powered voice storage feature, and a common search tool are among the new features unveiled Wednesday that went from concept to launch in a few months thanks to AI tools like Cursor, Uber chief technology officer Praveen Neppalli Naga told TechCrunch.

“What we’ve seen in the last few months is a fundamental restructuring, a new approach to programming,” Naga said, adding that the shift began late last year with the emergence of effective AI.

Naga said something like booking hotels would have taken a year to – a long process that included initial development, construction, and testing and improvement before opening it to customers. That time has been cut in half; and hopes that now that more engineers adopt agentic AI workflows, they will move faster.

“Our problem in most cases at Uber, it’s not a lack of ideas; there are many things we want to do,” he said. “It’s always a challenge, we don’t have enough time or resources to produce these things.”

During its Go-Get event, Uber also launched a navigation system, which provides users with a guide to tourist attractions, local attractions, and other useful information about their destination. Uber has also added a delivery option to Uber Eats, by adding “rooms” that contain a list of items that many people forget about. This will eventually include curated dining suggestions and a way to reserve a table through OpenTable.

The company is also rolling out a feature called “Eats for the Way,” which allows customers who have reserved Uber Black to also order a drink or snack that will be in the car when it arrives.