SEOUL, May 9 (Korea Bizwire) — More people failed to get a taxi using taxi-hailing apps in Seoul last year due to the dwindling number of cab drivers and the common practice of ‘picking customers’.
The Seoul Institute conducted a survey of 4,000 taxi passengers, in which those who had failed to catch a cab in the past accounted for 43.2 percent, up fourfold since the previous survey in 2020.
Customers failed to catch a cab an average of 1.4 times in 2020, but that jumped to 2.5 times in 2021.
The primary reason behind this issue was largely pointed determined to be the dwindling rate of taxi operation in the pandemic era.
“Taxi drivers working night shifts dwindled in number, failing to meet the spike in demand. Some drivers refused to respond to hails for short distances, in hopes of finding a higher fare, which has also exacerbated the problem,” the institute said.
Those who reported being refused by drivers after hailing a taxi in the street jumped from 1 percent in 2020 to 11.8 percent in 2021.
Image Credit: Yonhap / photonews@koreabizwire.com
No idea how I ended up reading this article, as the initial goal was to do the contenteam research for multilingual apps, lol. But I have something to add though – it looks like a common practice for taxi drivers to refuse short-distance and cheap drives. Too bad – I usually leave tips, especially for short distances.