Didi Bus announced that direct search of its routes and ride booking service is now available on the Didi-Kuaidi app. It has also begun to test the waters in the leisure travel bus service.
Didi Bus launched a trial run as a Wechat account on July 16. It is operating about 1,500 bus services on more than 700 bus routes in Beijing and Shenzhen. Meanwhile it is also operating shuttle service for the employees of certain companies such as SF Express, Huawei, OPPO and Lenovo.
Didi Bus’s general manager Jinfei Li said it has managed to cover the key areas of Beijing and Shenzhen and provide service for over 500,000 users in the two-month trial period. Overall operations have already exceeded expectations, with average seat occupancy rate at over 60% and repeat usage rate among passengers at 80%.
“Didi Bus will add new cities to our expansion and invest more in new routes to enable more users to enjoy our service,” he said. Besides urban commuters Didi Bus is also exploring different scenarios for transportation demand to satisfy a variety of niches.
Didi Bus operated over 50 new leisure travel routes during the Golden Week in Beijing and Shenzhen. These included routes to popular tourist attractions Dongzhimen and Longze Townships to Gubei Lake Village in Bejing, and shuttles arranged with Huatong Travel to the Shenzhen airport, high-speed railway station, Hong Kong border checkpoints, ferry ports and even directly to Hong Kong.
Mr. Li said during the National Day Holiday period, Didi Bus had over 80% seat occupancy overall. Its new leisure travel route received over 7,000 ride bookings on the launch day.(Translation by David)
