Uber expands into hotel bookings with new app features

On Wednesday, during its annual Go-Get product event, Uber announced a new hotel-booking feature that allows customers in the United States to book accommodations directly through its mobile application. The launch represents a significant expansion of the platform beyond its core ride-hailing and food delivery businesses, pushing the company deeper into travel services. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi highlighted this shift, stating, “Uber is now an app for everything, where you can go, you can get, and now you can travel,”

Through a partnership with Expedia Group—the travel technology company Khosrowshahi led for 12 years—the new service provides access to more than 700,000 hotels worldwide. To drive adoption of its subscription service, Uber One, the company is offering specific incentives for members who book through the app. These benefits include:

• A 20% discount on a rolling list of 10,000 hotels.
• 10% back in Uber Credits on all bookings.

According to Uber chief technology officer Praveen Neppalli Naga, the rapid rollout of the hotel-booking feature was made possible by agentic AI, which refers to AI systems capable of autonomous action. The engineering team adopted agentic AI tools like Cursor, an agentic AI tool used for software development, starting late last year. Naga told TechCrunch that these tools helped reduce the development time for new features. Naga noted that the company’s primary constraint has historically been time and resources rather than a lack of ideas, explaining that there are many features they want to build. He added that the shift represents a fundamental reset in how software is built.

Uber plans to expand its travel offerings further. The company will add vacation rental inventory from Vrbo, a vacation rental marketplace, later this year. Additionally, Uber has introduced a “travel mode” feature to provide users with tourist guides and local recommendations. This feature will eventually include curated dining recommendations and the option to book restaurant tables through a partnership with OpenTable, a restaurant reservation service.

Why it matters

Uber is evolving from a ride-hailing service into a comprehensive “app for everything,” using agentic AI to rapidly iterate on new product lines like travel. This expansion allows the company to capture more consumer activity while demonstrating how autonomous AI tools can shorten software development cycles.