Yes, there is Uber in Italy. But why isn't the American multinational, which provides electronic services in the area of urban private transportation, popular?
Os Italians are obsessed with apps. Whether it's to get in line at the post office, to locate Rome's classic fountains when someone is dying of thirst, or for food delivery.
glovo, To Good To Go, Moovit, JustEat, Trenit, Deliveroo and many other applications are on almost all smartphones, except Uber.
The truth is that Italians are not resistant to innovative technologiesOnline grocery orders and takeout food increased dramatically during the pandemic and changed everyone's habits forever in many regions.
A Uber has been present in Italy since 2013, but in 2017 the taxi association sued the Silicon Valley giant.
In April of that year, a Italian court blocked the company's operation in the country.
The reason? “The service constituted unfair competition.” Uber was also banned from promoting and advertising its services in Italy.
The company has a history of negative reactions from local taxi drivers, for example.
After the trial, Uber's lawyer in Italy commented: “We will appeal this decision which is based on a 25-year-old law. Now the government cannot waste any more time and needs to decide whether it wants to remain anchored in the past, protecting privileged profits, or whether it wants to allow Italians to benefit from new technologies.”
When Uber realized it would encounter a lot of resistance from the taxi association, it decided to shift gears. They took the concept off the market Uber Pop, where private drivers could join the company without a customer record, as in other countries.
This was the key point that angered taxi drivers, as the cost of getting your own license is high in Italy.
The journey to becoming a taxi driver in the country is fraught with challenges, where numbers are limited by city and new licenses are not created. Rightly so, taxi drivers fought to maintain a market that was already disappearing.
So Uber reworked a strategy to focus on Uber Eats – the food delivery service that quickly became very popular in Italy.
What about regular car trips? Well, Uber Taxi allows passengers to book a taxi on the app, but not a private driver. The company listened to the complaints and adapted. At the moment, only a few cities have it: Turin, Bologna, Nápoles, Milan e Rome. The number of drivers is also very low: around 1.000 across the country.
Uber is expected to continue growing, but a failed marketing campaign and halted start-up could be the reason why people are slow to include it in their lives.
In Rome, most people already own a car, so it's also very easy to get a ride from a friend or relative to the airport; and in cities like Turin or Milan, public transportation is well-developed.
According to 2019 statistics, 72% of the Italian population has never booked a car through an app.
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