Grab Philippines recently announced that 500 drivers have received penalties due to frequent cancellation of bookings, which many passengers have complained about.  To further reduce these cancellations, a number of Grab drivers will not be allowed to see where their passengers want to go before drivers confirm their bookings. 

Seeing a passenger’s destination is something that Grab drivers have always been able to do before they allow or refuse a booking.

Only one quarter of all of Grab Philippines drivers will have passenger destinations hidden from them—i.e. the drivers who have historically low acceptance rates. This new feature will be rolled out on Friday, April 27.

Grab is also rolling out an additional feature to further decrease drivers’ selective behavior. This auto-acceptance of bookings will be applicable to all the drivers of Grab, and means that passenger bookings will be automatically assigned to the drivers.

However, Brian Cu, the Country Head of Grab Philippines, has said that rider destination will still be visible to drivers during the early morning hours for the drivers’ own protection.

To address the growing number of complaints, Mr. Cu has said “We will implement non-showing of passenger information before ride acceptance, as it is a major source of complaint. We have rolled out additional and stricter measures to address issues on cancellations and this is just the start.

We want to vastly improve our services; hence, our consecutive decisions to sanction 500 errant drivers over the week, and now the non-showing of the passenger destination and the auto-accept feature.”

Whether Grab will implement these new features in the other countries where the ride-hailing company operates is still unknown.