Ugabus Inc, the platform for booking buses to travel from Kampala to major towns in Uganda and a number of cities in East Africa, has redesigned its application and added more features to offer a finer user experience.
The company has also changed its service model a bit, removing the option of booking buses from the website and limiting to people with the UgaBus app. It’s available to only Android users.
The new app is light and easy to use. For payments, Ugabus Inc has partnered with MTN Uganda and Airtel Uganda to facilitate mobile money transactions.
Additionally, the firm has also developed a customized wallet where you can keep your cash and be rewarded with “great discounts and cash backs.”
Key features
After downloading the app and going through the registration process, you’ll find 6 main features.
The first is your Profile, and it displays your name, email, phone number and date of birth; the other is My Rides, which tracks your history of bookings and completed rides; there is also My Wallet, the customized UgaBus mobile wallet.
Under Notifications, you’ll find the latest news and updates about travel. With Explore, you’ll participate in the firm’s loyalty program where you’ll earn points, each equivalent to Shs1, by answering quizzes or using the app. These points can be spent on your next trip.
“The loyalty feature is a systematic way for UgaBus to share its revenue with the subscribers in our dynamic loyalty program that rewards Users with POINTS for every single activity they take on the app, including just opening the mobile app,” the company said in a statement to this website.
It added: “With over 73% of bus routes already added onto the platform and thousands of bus tickets sold through the UgaBus website, UgaBus allows travelers to conveniently buy a bus ticket of any bus to travel anywhere within East Africa. As ticketing shifts to become increasingly digital, UgaBus is primed to become the largest player using convenient technologies to help people eliminate the hassle out of bus ticketing.”
With smartphones getting cheaper and internet usage growing, it’s good news that one can now book a bus ahead of their trip instead of moving to the bus park, only to find a line of passengers, for instance, during festivities and the time kids are going back to school or breaking for holidays. The idea also improves security on buses since the bus companies know the kind of people they’re transporting.
In Kenya, BuuPass is also offering a service similar to that of UgaBus Inc, only that it also allows those without smartphones to book a bus using a USSD code.
The messaging service is only used by UgaBus to send you an ID code that you’ll use to identify yourself to the handlers of the bus.
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