2023-10-11 17:30:02
Shared trips are a great alternative for those who need to take long trips and do not own a vehicle, do not want to pay or cannot afford transportation such as the AVE or the plane; and they even prefer to move in company. Given the rise and challenges of this type of companies, among which BlaBlaCar stands out, how they see the mobility sector and the mobility law today, for example; Florent Bannwarthoperations director of BlaBlaCar Spain and Portugal, offers all the answers.
The results of last year 2022 were very high. How is 2023 going and what do you think is the reason for the increase in this type of mobility?
2022 was the year of return to normality after the pandemic, in which we were able to enjoy the first vacations without perimeter closures. But it was also the year in which fuel prices and inflation reached record levels. This context meant that many new users registered on the platform, and translated into an increase in activity of 83% compared to 2021, 34% more than in 2019. This year we continue to grow compared to 2022. In the first half , we registered 25% more activity.
And, although growth has slowed down during the summer due to public transport aid for young people between 18 and 30 years old, we have broken activity records in the rest of the age segments. Now that the aid has ended, activity is picking up again. In fact, since the price of gasoline rose again in August we saw how the registration of new drivers accelerated again. Now at the end of September, we have already been above last year on the same dates, which makes us think that we will break records again in this last quarter.
What advantages does this service offer? Why do people demand it so much? Likewise, and being a bit critical, what disadvantages do customers find?
Savings are very important when it comes to activating users, but there is another factor that is becoming increasingly stronger when choosing our platform, and that is the ability of car sharing to directly connect locations that no other locations have. travel alternatives. For example, if a passenger wanted to get from a town such as Guadarrama, in Madrid, to Amoeiro, in Ourense, as a passenger they would have to make a minimum of 4 transfers in different means of transport. However, there are thousands of cars that make the journey from Madrid to Santiago de Compostela every day and they are half empty, with an average occupancy of 1.7 people per vehicle. If these empty seats were shared on BlaBlaCar, our platform’s Boost technology could propose picking up or dropping off a passenger along the driver’s route, with minimal detour. This unlocks hundreds of possible travel combinations between towns. This involves optimizing the seats that travel empty, allowing the environmental impact of the cars in circulation to be reduced, increasing savings and offering mobility alternatives to thousands of Spanish municipalities. In fact, in the last year we have connected 86% of the more than 8,100 Spanish locations.
As a disadvantage, and allow me to be optimistic, we would have 14% of locations left to connect, but at the rate of growth at which we are going, both in activity and technological development, that percentage will soon be reduced. We further estimate that only 3% of long-distance trips made by private car are shared on a car-sharing platform. This gives us a lot of room for improvement and growth, to achieve 100% connected Spanish municipalities.
The increase in gasoline prices has also caused the prices of this service to rise. Have you noticed it in any way?
Indeed, we have noticed increases in the number of new drivers during the summer. Regarding the increase in the price of trips, the platform establishes mechanisms to avoid profit by drivers outside of sharing travel expenses. Drivers themselves can raise or lower the recommended price a little, and they usually do so depending on the price of gasoline or the type of car they have, always respecting the maximum limit. So in general the variations are minimal and the price is usually very similar from one year to the next. In fact, in 2023 prices are somewhat lower than in 2022, when gasoline prices reached record levels.
What percentage do they have of drivers versus passengers? Which profile is the most in demand or in demand?
The profile of users is becoming more heterogeneous every day. The average age of our users is 32 years old and a third of them are over 35. The youngest people who started using the platform 14 years ago, when we were born, have grown up with us. And many have joined, we already have 8 million users in Spain. The distribution between men and women has always been quite equal: 52 and 48%. We have approximately a third of driving users. It is curious because Spain is the country of the 21 in which we operate that has the most users who use the platform sometimes as drivers and other times as passengers.
What are the growth possibilities for a business like this?
Our goal is to reduce the number of empty seats traveling on the road. From the carpooling side we seek to continue improving technology to be able to reach all municipalities in Spain in an efficient and sustainable way. But we also have a focus on multimodality, and we are working so that our platform combines bus offerings (our own BlaBlaCar buses and those of other operators), trains and car sharing. In this way, that journey that I mentioned before between a small town in Madrid and another in Ourense can be managed within our platform, choosing for each stage of the process the best way to travel based on the needs of each trip and each traveler. . Car sharing for all those small towns where the train or bus is not efficient, and collective transport for the major hubs. The vision is the same: optimize. Whether vehicles or routes. And make the main means of transport work together to be able to offer the widest possible range of travel options to all users.
Operations Director of BlaBlaCar Spain and Portugal PF
The first law that will define car sharing in Spain is being debated. What will it mean?
That first definition at the national level, which was complemented with some promotional tools, was put on hold due to the calling of elections. But the Sustainable Mobility Law will be resumed when we have a new government and will probably be more ambitious because our model is already defined in some autonomous mobility, transition and climate laws. This new Law will be the perfect framework to get closer to the level of support and promotion of carpooling that exists in other countries such as France, where there are even direct subsidies for users. It is not as important that it is soon as that the framework is adequate for the promotion of long-distance car sharing and the launch of BlaBlaCar Daily, carpooling for daily trips, in our autonomous communities.
Do you think there is still someone who doesn’t know the application? If so, why, and how do they provide visibility?
In Spain our notoriety is so high that the term car sharing, especially in the form of carpooling, and BlaBlaCar are used practically interchangeably. For us this is a source of pride, because it implies that the model is standardized and is known by almost all Spaniards. But we know that there is still work to do for the adoption of the model in Spain, and in the backbone potential that the model has to reach the small towns of Half-Full Spain.
According to our data, almost 95% of the Spanish population knows the BlaBlaCar brand, around 20% are or have been users of the platform, but they still represent less than 5% of all long-distance journeys made by car. particularly those that are shared. That is why we are optimistic and we know that the times are with us: more and more Spaniards want to travel efficiently and sustainably.
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