Uber wants to be your tour guide with UberTRIP

Have you ever found yourself in a town you’re not very familiar with, have time to kill, and want to go sightseeing? Well if you’re in Ipoh when those desires align, Uber is here to give you a hand with their brand new feature in Malaysia: UberTRIP.

As its name suggests, the feature is designed for people who want to explore popular tourist locations. Unlike Uber’s services, UberTRIP is strictly a time-based on-demand ride service where the cost of your ride is calculated by time, not distance.

UberTRIP is currently available in Ipoh, Perak and was launched in collaboration with Destination Perak (the state’s tourism industry). With UberTRIP, users will pay a fee of RM140 for 4 hours of travel time — regardless of distance. After 4 hours, users will be charged a fee of 60 sen per minute.

Although a rider can choose to go wherever they in the 4 hour time window, Uber + Destination Perak also came up with three suggested routes for tourists to take. The first is a ride from Ipoh to Gopeng, the second is a tour of Ipoh’s history and food and finally, the third trip takes you from Ipoh to Kuala Kangsar.

In a way, UberTRIP is sort of like one of those tour packages you can purchase when visiting places because participating drivers will also undergo travel guide training with Destination Perak so they can act as a local tour guide. If you’re willing to do some research before visiting a place, though, it’ll probably be cheaper for you to plot your own course and request individual rides to and from each location instead.

UberTRIP can be accessed via the Uber app. All you need to do is launch it, select UberTRIP and confirm your request. At the end of the trip, you will be charged a total fare based on your trip duration, which you can pay with either card or cash options.