by Turo
posted on November 16, 2023
FrançaisStarting in the first half of 2024, guests will be able to book all trips on Turo with the Book Instantly feature. At that time, instead of guests requesting to book a car and the host needing to manually approve the booking, trips will automatically be approved with Book Instantly.
New features to better support hosts
In preparation for this change, we’re coming out with two new features to help give hosts more control over their settings.
- New location-based trip duration settings — Soon hosts will be able to adjust their trip duration settings so guests can book trips with delivery for a different minimum length of time than trips from their home location. This can come in handy if you only want trips with delivery that are over a certain number of days but are comfortable hosting a shorter trip from your home location.
- Custom pickup and return hours — Starting this winter, hosts will be able to set unique pickup and return hours for their home and delivery locations. For example, you might be able to accommodate trips from your home location during the weekend and on weekday mornings and evenings, but maybe you can only support trips with deliveries on weekends. With this new feature, you can easily customize your pickup and return hours for trips with and without delivery, to work with your schedule.
Why Book Instantly is good for hosts
Vehicles with Book Instantly turned on tend to earn more per month. That’s because guests prefer the convenience of booking instantly and don’t like waiting for their host to approve their trip request.
Attracting more guests to Turo
Turo currently has partnerships with online travel agencies like Kayak and Hopper which are integrated with Turo in different countries, to let guests book cars on our platform. Only vehicles with Book Instantly turned on are allowed to show up on these online travel agencies’ websites, so after this change, even more vehicles on Turo will be visible on these other sites too. That means even more bookings for hosts.
Additionally, switching over to 100% Book Instantly will help make Turo more comparable to other types of online booking experiences that run on a book instantly model. The more similar Turo is to what guests are used to, the more guests will want to book cars on the platform which means more bookings for hosts.
Understandably, guests don’t like having to wait for their host to manually approve their booking and a proportion of hosts let booking requests expire or reject the request, which of course is frustrating for guests. The transition to Book Instantly will help streamline the booking process and help offer a great guest experience.
Guest screening and verification process
Historically some hosts have kept Book Instantly turned off so they can manually screen each guest before deciding to accept their booking or not. This type of host screening, unfortunately, can be discriminatory, which isn’t behavior we want in the Turo community.
Rest assured that Turo currently screens every guest and trip, using a constantly evolving, machine learning model to assess risk.
Turo has guest eligibility restrictions in place so higher-end vehicles can only be booked by guests who are 25+ or 30+ years old, or who have had a drivers’ license for a certain period of time, based on the market value of the vehicle and region.
Additionally, guests with low ratings are removed from the platform to help keep our community safe.
Lastly, if something in a guest’s messages makes you feel uncomfortable or seems off, please contact Turo Customer Support immediately. You can cancel a trip if you need to.
Stay tuned
Look out for updates about the new features to better support hosts and to learn when Book Instantly will become the default for all trips.
Share your thoughts
We’d love to hear your feedback including how switching over to Book Instantly might impact you and what we can do to better support you. Please fill out this short survey.
