Uber Events?

Alexandra - your hotel room block shuttle situation sounds very similar to mine! And I see you're getting married in NJ too! I wonder if we are blocked at the same place?

In any case, Uber Events sounds like it would be a good fit for what you'd need it for. We are planning on setting up an Uber Events code ourselves. I have not used it before, but I like that you are only paying for what is used, and that you can set parameters for how guests use it, such as for distance or price of the trips, to make sure it is not being abused. I will be looking into it more this coming week, I will update here if/when I find out more

Let me know what you find out, for sure! I think it's a great idea, especially for some of our friends who already know how to use rideshare apps Plus, I imagine it's much cheaper than even renting a school bus for just one trip.

Our room block is at the Marriott in Hamilton, NJ!

Hi Alexandra! Welcome to WeddingWire and congrats on your engagement! How many guests will be staying at your hotel room block and in-need of transportation?

Brittany gives some great feedback here! That's awesome that you're both looking into Uber Events! It seems like it would be a good fit for your event transportation needs. Definitely an interesting resource to look into and do some research on for your wedding day!

Okay, so I started an inquiry.

First, you give your event a name. They ask the address of the event (if you give an address, it then requires that all guests be dropped off / picked up from within 0.25 miles of that address for the code to be redeemed). They ask for the date and time window that the code will be valid for. They ask you how many "passes" you want, and describe this as the number of guests needing transportation (but I don't think this number will be as cut and dry as the number of guests needing the service, because more than one person can go in one UberX car - meaning you won't be using one "pass" per person, it's almost like one pass per ride, with up to 4 people in that ride; at least that's how I would imagine it works). They ask you if you want a unique code for every guest, or one universal code for all guests to use (they say the universal code is easier). Then you choose how many rides you want on each pass (1, 2 for round trip, etc.) and set the max amount for each ride ($5, $10, $25, etc), so you'd have to know about how much it would be to get from one place to the other (they don't let you pick numbers in between those $5 increments - so if the ride might cost $11, you'd be picking "up to $25" to cover the whole fare, something to note). If the ride goes over the amount set, they charge the individual's Uber account, not yours. They charge a service fee of 2.50% upfront (so for 75 passes with one ride on each pass and a max of $10 per ride, they charge $18.75 upfront). Then they tell you the max cost of your event (charged to your card after the event), and take your payment. And that's it. For the example above, the max cost of that event would be "up to $750", but would obviously be less if all the rides weren't used.

After looking at this, I went ahead and requested some information from a recommended limo/shuttle company in the area. There are a lot of things about the Uber Event that are question marks for me, that I just don't know if I want to risk (for one, enough Ubers being in the area at the time for all guests who want to use it - we are not getting married in a major city). I also sort of get lost when they start asking about the number of passes and number of rides per pass, because a husband and wife (two people) will only need one pass to get to the venue, they obviously wouldn't take separate Ubers. Their verbiage of "one pass per person" doesn't really make sense when 4 people can fit in a normal Uber. So I started to wonder if I'd end up getting the "wrong" number of passes and wouldn't have enough for all of my guests, or would have way too much...math is not a strong suit of mine, and all of this is actually giving me a headache lol hopefully this all makes some sense and helps the people wondering!