The two features - Sessions and Personalized Alerts - are the latest additions to a wide range of innovations available to reduce drivers’ idle time and enable them to focus on completing more bookings for every hour they spend on the Grab platform.

“Our partners drive to earn and support their families. We understand how every minute online is a potential income opportunity for them. And as the nation faces economic headwinds such as the rising prices of goods, we want to support our partners maximize their time and earnings. With our technology, we are able to help them reduce idle time on the road, and also enable them to focus their energies on completing trips,” said Grab Philippines Chief Operating Officer Ronald Roda.

“In 2022, Grab driver-partners from across Southeast Asia enjoyed a 3.55 percent reduction in average idle time, compared to that in 2021, helping to further optimize their earnings potential on the platform.”

To help Grab driver-partners maximize their online hours and earnings, Grab builds various tech features to empower them to position their vehicles where passengers are so that they can capture as much passenger demand as possible. The two new tech features are designed to help partners easily identify such high-demand areas:

• Sessions enable driver-partners to keep within a predefined geographical area during periods of high passenger demand. Driver-partners can sign up in advance to drive in one of these zones for a fixed period of time (3 to 5 hours), enabling them to only receive bookings within the specific area. This set-up will help them to complete more trips per online hour with shorter trip distances.
• Personalized Alert is a push notification sent to offline driver-partners when specific areas are experiencing high passenger demand. These are partners who frequent the same areas based on their historical driving patterns, and would not want to miss any good opportunity to earn.

Grab has also been innovating to provide driver-partners with a more seamless driving experience through features that assist with the navigation of roads and the management of bookings, enabling them to focus on driving and providing good service to passengers. Some of these features include:

• Back-to-Back Bookings: Searches for the next booking for driver-partners before they complete their current trip to minimize idle time between rides.
• Auto Accept: Minimizes the chances of driver-partners missing incoming assigned bookings by automatically accepting them on drivers’ behalf. This enhances efficiency during peak times, reduces idle time between rides, and increases the number of rides that driver-partners can complete per online hour. Driver-partners have the flexibility to toggle on or off this feature at their discretion.
• Allocation Swaps: Swaps bookings in the backend to assign the closest driver-partners to passengers, which helps to save time for both passengers and driver-partners by minimizing the time needed for driver-partners to pick up their passengers.
• GrabMaps: Southeast Asia is known for its complex road layouts with countless streets and corners that can be time-consuming and challenging to navigate. GrabMaps provides location-based intelligence and services supported by a comprehensive map solution that is continuously updated and documents back alleys and narrow side streets. As such, it helps drivers to reduce unnecessary delays, and guides them to use the most efficient routes to complete their trips.
• Share Live Location: This feature was introduced in July 2023 in the Philippines. It enables passengers to share their live location with their assigned drivers if they are not sure whether they are waiting at the right location. It facilitates smoother and faster pick-ups.

A seamless driving experience also enables driver-partners to choose the way they drive. A top favorite feature amongst driver-partners in the Philippines is My Destination. This feature allows driver-partners to specify their preferred destination which then guides the platform to assign bookings that bring them closer to it. In doing so, the feature also removes any worries about driving towards their preferred destination with empty vehicles.

Another driver-partners’ favorite is Grab’s cashless payment options, which include e-wallets like GrabPay and GCash. These digital payment methods help driver-partners to effortlessly collect payments, including toll fees where applicable. Grab’s Automated Toll feature automatically populates and includes the estimated toll price in the final fare owed to the driver-partner.