I recently visited a friend in Pflugerville, TX. I was quite excited because I thought I would take a Waymo Uber ride from the hotel to my friends house, and I have never been on Waymo before. But it turns out that Waymo only operates inside the city of Austin, so actually Pflugerville is at least 10 miles outside the range that Waymo operates in currently. That is when I realized something interesting:
Waymo should consider offering rides in tourist cities!
See, I have visited Austin before and the first time you go there you will see the Capitol building and look at all the portraits of the past governors, then maybe you will visit the Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry (it is a wonderful 2 hours of fun and as I remember, it is actually free ! ).
But during spring break, the majority of the tourists in Texas go to Galveston or San Antonio or Corpus Christie and these are the main tourist spots here in Texas. In San Antonio for example, it is very difficult to find parking spaces, and the walk from the parking lot to say the Riverwalk is quite long, so most people take Uber to get the Alamo or the Riverwalk or wherever you are going and this is a gold mine for Waymo.
Imagine all those tourists going back home to Dallas or Houston or wherever and saying to their friends, “do you know, I took a Waymo ride in San Antonio, and it was so cool!”. Now that is the best publicity that Waymo could ever receive !
So hey Waymo, start offering rides in San Antonio even at a discount if you wish, it is totally worth it just for the publicity !