Insights and news from the ATOM Mobility team

The traveling industry is starting to recover from the pandemic. There are more and more tourists appearing and hotels are considering new services to attract them. It is an easy task with ATOM - the hotel can offer different vehicle sharing services for the convenience of their clients as well as for additional income.

This is also an additional opportunity for fleet owners to set up financially beneficial partnerships with the hotel owners. Fleet representatives can reach out to hotels and offer to have vehicles available for their guests and earn money on that as well.

WIN-WIN-WIN situation for all

Why should hotels be interested in this setup? Well, this is their opportunity to earn a percentage from the monthly revenue created by their customers. Offering vehicles for its guests is only a natural next step for providing an even better guest experience. The fleet owner and hotel can sign an agreement and divide the profit between themselves. Moreover, the hotel will have its own dashboard on ATOM platform so it is easy to follow the usage of the fleet that is allocated to the hotel. And it is possible to offer multiple vehicle types - vehicle sharing is not restricted to only bikes in the ATOM app.

Vehicles for both short-term and long-term rental

Hotels have all sorts of guests with various agendas for their trips. As a fleet owner, you can help hotels provide a comprehensive set of mobility solutions that would match all the different needs. For a tourist looking to explore a city or attend a meeting nearby, a daily bike or scooter rental would work great. For tourists interested in exploring the surroundings of the city over the weekend, a 2-3 day car rental would fit the bill nicely. With ATOM software, customers can pre-book the chosen vehicle even before the arrival if the plans are known. If the plans are made on the go, they could grab the suitable vehicle with an on-demand model without the hassle of pre-booking. The best part for the hotel is the fact that its employees do not have to engage with customers regarding vehicle rentals. The rental process is fully automated via the app.

Private branding

In bigger cities, it is worth it for fleet owners to even consider closer cooperation with larger hotel chains. It is easy with ATOM to create a separate app for the particular hotel chain that is branded accordingly. In this case, it is even worth considering branding the part of the fleet that is allocated to the hotel. If the hotel chain is active in several cities where the vehicle sharing company operates as well, then it gives even bigger options for successful collaboration. ATOM doesn't market its software directly to hotels. This opportunity is open for ATOM customers, so they are able to form strong partnerships and even built their whole business model based on this approach, as many of our customers have chosen to do.

And if you are a fleet owner you don't have to stop there. Remember that also resorts and commercially managed "villa villages", or large building complexes (both corporate and private end-users) would like to use vehicle sharing services. Also, employers with a large number of employees are usually thinking about how to make their movement throughout the city more efficient. Vehicle sharing service is one of the best solutions. Employers could even consider using branded fleets to provide the opportunity to move around the city or corporate property.

With the help of ATOM Software and private fleet functionality, our customers have the ability to truly transform their local mobility landscape into a more sustainable one. Be creative!

Although the younger generation uses mobile technology for everything, most car rentals still operate the same way as they did 20 years ago - there are counters, employees who will issue keys, sign the papers, check the documents, process the payment, and then walk around the car together with the person, who rents in order to make sure they’re on the same page as far as the existing damages go. This process is time-consuming, and when the flight arrives, car rental booths have queues up to the gates.

However, some car rentals have already introduced a fully automated mobile-first experience to get rid of the issues that a traditional approach faces. If you operate a car rental business, you'll discover the solution below.

Would moving online solve the issues?

The previous example explained the pain points of airport car rentals. Most in-city car rentals do not have the kind of rush hours that their airport branches do. Some car rentals have even set up a fully online reservation system that will allow you to book the car, verify your identity, pay in advance, and then wait until an employee brings the car to your doorstep.

However, even in the scenario mentioned above, there are the same people working behind the scenes to make all this happen. The difference is that they are not sitting in the booth and communicating with the customer face-to-face. They are sitting in the office and dealing with all of that remotely. And when the car is delivered, the handoff processes are still in-person.

Is there a better way?

While a fully online experience solves some of the problems that the traditional car rental model faces, is this really the way people want to rent cars? While website designs and user interfaces are improving every day, navigating and booking processes are still often painful experiences for the users.

It takes a lot of resources to build a mobile-friendly browser-based booking system, such as AirBnB or Booking.com. However, if you are using a phone when browsing their site, even they are naturally guiding you to download their app for a better user experience.

The younger generation manages all their day-to-day errands from their phone, so naturally, they would do the same when renting their car. And it would be even better if they don’t have to see another human in the process of getting and returning their car - doesn’t that sound familiar and quite like AirBnB’s standard self-check-in model?

Why not mobile apps?

If apps deliver a better user experience on mobile, then why not allow your customers to rent cars via your mobile app?

Development costs - so far the main obstacle has been the fact that car rental companies do not want to become software developers, and hiring a company to build the apps that actually work would end up being too expensive to deliver ROI in the near future. That’s why it would be easier to stick with the status quo.

Technical limitations - another reason why apps haven’t become a popular medium for car rentals is that apps have technical limitations, and human interaction is still required to issue keys, sign the documents, and make sure the car is in good condition when returned.

We see a huge trend in app usage for on-demand car-sharing, which is a different business model entirely. Since the car-sharing industry is relatively young, the companies are not restricted by the bureaucracy and procedures that traditional car rentals are facing. While car-sharing apps may take the business of short-distance trips away from traditional car rentals, they won’t threaten the bread and butter of long-term rental businesses just yet.

Tech to the rescue

How could a traditional car rental business step into the 21st century and automate the whole rental process without spending a fortune on app development while making sure to still leverage its standard operating procedures and current risk management practices?

With a proper technology suite that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg - https://atommobility.com/products-rent

ATOM Mobility has been offering white-label software solutions for the mobility industry since 2019. With customers in more than 40 countries and 140 cities worldwide, any car rental business will be in good company.

An ideal car rental flow - with ATOM Mobility, a car rental would get its own apps for IOS and Android, where users would go through the following (simplified) journey:

Download the app and register.
Upload a driver’s license that will be verified by artificial intelligence (AI).
Choose dates, location, and the model.
Pay in advance.
Unlock the car with the app.
Enjoy the rental car.

Return and complete a standard walk-around-the-car handoff inspection powered by FocalX that automatically recognizes and reports any scratches.

The whole process is automated, and the information for each rental transaction will be available in the back-end for car rental businesses.

The freedom that this new mobile-first flow provides for both users and rental businesses is a great example of how technology can help to provide a better service. Opening up a new location is as simple as driving the cars to a new parking lot.

If you operate a car rental business, we’d be happy to chat - https://atommobility.com/demo

Recently all the biggest players in the micro-mobility market have moved to where most people are looking for commuting solutions. One of them and the most significant is Google Maps. ATOM Mobility is introducing a unique opportunity for all of its clients to be found on Google Maps free of charge.

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) providers are definitely the next big thing in the micro-mobility industry. With the huge amount of data available, platforms such as Google Maps and Moovit have become the leading MaaS trip planning solutions. Being on Google Maps means that millions of people around the world can search for and find your micro-mobility service. To be more precise, Google Maps has 154.4 million unique users in the United States alone monthly. And don't forget that the map is preloaded on ~85% of phones distributed worldwide.

Does getting into Google Maps seem to be mission impossible? For ATOM Mobility customers, this is no longer the case. All you have to do is to fill in the form and enable General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) on the ATOM dashboard. ATOM provides this data to Google with a description of the docked and dockless bikes or scooters the partner provides. Thus users can see the availability of vehicles and prices. A docked bike is represented by two data points associated with its bike station: availability and geographic location. A dockless bike or scooter is represented by its individual availability status and geographic location.

In 2021 Google Maps added new features - the ability to pay for parking or buy a train ticket right from the app. So let's see what comes next and how this will make life easier for those using micro-mobility solutions.

Bring you mobility service to the next level with ATOM Mobility. Contact us here here and schedule a demo!

Vehicle sharing is picking up a vehicle in a convenient location, getting to the destination, and leaving it there for other people to use. Ride-hailing is using a private driver to reach the destination. The only exception, in this case, is that the driver is not always a taxi driver – it could be the person that is offering the service in a private car. Both of these services are examples of shared mobility. The current trend is that those who have launched one are adding to their portfolio another in some shape or form. So we at ATOM Mobility are moving towards service integration in the micromobility business.

It all started with Uber in 2018 when the company announced that the dockless bike-sharing company Jump had started to partner with its ride-hail app. For users, this move has made it easier to plan the first or the last mile of the trip. Later that year Lyft acquired Motivate (Citi Bike), the largest bike-share operator in North America, and announced an investment of $100 million into the dramatic expansion of Citi Bike in New York City with the additional benefit for users, whereby they can access bikes directly via the Lyft app. At the end of 2020, this trend reached Europe when Bolt announced that it was preparing to invest €100 million in electric scooters and bikes. Bolt initially was called Taxify and was founded with the vision of aggregating all Tallinn and Riga taxis on one platform. Later the company expanded to other cities but initially focused only on ride-hailing.

This trend is expanding, because this is a logical next step – the synergy between ride-hailing and vehicle sharing offers users an easy and convenient way to get from point A to point B. Whereas for operators this constitutes a perfect opportunity to diversify their services, as well as to strengthen their positions in the market. Vehicle sharing is no longer just a means of transportation ordered via the app. It has become the opportunity for users to plan their trips. However, from a business perspective, operators should not jump into new opportunities as they appear and diversify their services too early without additional funding. Launching new verticals should be well-calculated.

Following this trend, ATOM has launched a new product - a ride-hailing and taxi platform that can be easily integrated with the existing scooter, bike, moped, and car-sharing software provided to customers worldwide. The ATOM ride-hailing platform can also be started as a separate business and not limited to cars or taxis. A ride-hailing service can be provided by vans, rickshaws, boats, as well as any other means of transportation you can think of. And this is the fastest way for potential customer to enter new market or just test the idea. The approach developed by ATOM helps to open new business verticals at low cost and furthermore it is easier to scale from there. Moreover, there is a logical synergy between scooter, bike, car-sharing users, and ride-hailing.

Software for ride-hailing and taxi industries

This development seems like a perfect next step for ATOM Mobility - the company that started its business in 2019 by providing the first vehicle-sharing opportunities in the Latvian capital, Riga. Subsequently, ATOM Mobility has focused on software development and now provides other companies in more than 70 cities worldwide with the software to run their car sharing, bikes sharing, scooter sharing, forklift sharing, golf cart sharing, boat sharing, and other businesses. Our mission at ATOM has always been to support different types of businesses and help them succeed with all the knowledge that we have gained through our clients and ourselves. This is the path we are going to take in the future by following trends and not leaving our clients behind. 

If you are interested to launch your own ride-hail or taxi platform, you can find more information here: https://ride.atommobility.com