How employees in Europe travel for work

Around 10 million Uber trips happen each day, on average. And across Europe, business travellers use Uber to get rides to where they need to go every day too–from heading to the airport, to meeting a client, and more.

But what trends are appearing in those business rides? We looked back at data from the last year to see what emerged, and based upon Uber’s data sets, these are the trends that we are seeing.

We looked at what European cities took the most rides with Uber for work, and while all of the usual suspects top the list — some of the results might surprise you.

In 2017, these cities had the highest number of business rides with Uber. These rides were taken on a business profile, or on Uber for Business.

When you live and work in Europe, international travel is a regular part of the job for many employees. With Heathrow being one of the biggest and busiest airports in the world, we wanted to see where exactly business travellers are going when they leave the UK.
In 2017, these cities had the most business travellers visiting for work from the UK.

As part of our analysis, we also looked at which cities have the highest proportion of late-night business rides as a proportion of all business rides with the Uber app–from leaving the office late, to finishing up at client dinner, for example.

In 2017, these cities had the highest number of late night business rides, as a percentage of total business rides with Uber.

The award for the shortest average business trip with Uber? That goes to Brasnov, Romania, with an average ride length of just a quick 9.7 minutes — and all of the winners on the list stay under 11 minute rides.

These regions in Europe had the shortest average ride time for business trips with Uber.

In November 2016, Uber started giving riders the option to compliment drivers for going above and beyond–from being a skillful navigator to having a pristine vehicle. So we took a look at what makes an impact for Uber’s business riders. While the findings were similar to our overall riders, we saw that business travellers appreciate an immaculate car more than most.

Looking at a one week sample from October 2017, the most common compliments business travellers in Europe give Uber driver-partners are:

Finally, we know Uber plays an important part in how riders cover the first and last mile when travelling both for work and pleasure, so it’s no surprise to see airports and major train stations featuring in the top drop-off locations for business rides taken with Uber.