GoTo is mapping the road ahead for the eco-friendly shared mobility operator following the COVID-19 pandemic, not just ensuring its full range of services meets increased demand, but also launching a new campaign that promises to extend its reach even further.
Like many service sectors affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the mobility industry – including Malta’s multi-modal vehicle sharing platform, GoTo – was all but brought to a halt. However, this sudden inactivity inspired creative solutions within the GoTo team in order to maintain momentum throughout this challenging time.
“The mobility industry has been among those most impacted by COVID-19 as people stopped using transportation,” explains GoTo CEO Gordon Bugeja. “We decided early on to ask most of our staff to work from home, and to promote multiple measures to incentivise our customers to stay home, despite the effect this had on our business. It compelled us to look at alternative ways to generate income, such as helping businesses make deliveries or supporting them with vehicles that they could use to keep their operations afloat.”
Nevertheless, GoTo has noted an ever-increasing rise in reservation figures, often surpassing a thousand rides per day, as the country adapts to the ‘new normal’ following the pandemic. In fact, in February 2020 – just one month before the pandemic reached Malta – GoTo also launched an electric scooter rental service that is now exceeding all expectations by nearing the high popularity of GoTo’s One-Way and Roundtrip services already available in its fleet of electric cars.
At GoTo, accompanying this wave of success is a renewed commitment to making the innovation available beyond Malta and Israel, into the rest of Europe and, ultimately, the world.
“GoTo’s global vision is to provide an end-to-end shared mobility experience, covering diverse mobility needs from micro-mobility to one-way and roundtrip car-sharing and beyond,” continues Mr Bugeja. “We have secured a $19 million funding round to help us expand our multimodal mobility services into Europe, providing our customers with ultimate mobility confidence and becoming an equivalent of car keys, so that wherever they are, there may be a GoTo vehicle for them to use. We are looking forward to launching in the first city later this year.”
Meanwhile, venturing into new horizons is not the only change taking place at GoTo – the company has also launched the ‘Change – Let’s Give it a Go’ campaign, which draws on humanity’s renewed priorities following the lessons learned through the pandemic.
“If there’s any silver-living from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that it has shown our ability to change and unite towards a common goal, overcoming challenges to stay connected, reduce conflict, and even lower carbon emissions globally,” observes Johnny Tominaga, Chief Marketing Officer at GoTo. “Our ‘Change – Let’s Give it a Go’ campaign aims to inspire people to continue reshaping their habits purposefully, with the intent of creating a better tomorrow, not only because we should, but because we can. We believe shared mobility and replacing combustion vehicles with electric ones addresses that, so we invite everyone to try our services – but we hope it doesn’t stop there. Positive impact can be generated anywhere and by anyone. Every effort helps and we invite everyone to take the first step towards bringing positive change to the world.”
For more information about GoTo, visit www.goto.com.mt. You can download the GoTo app on Google Play and on the Apple App Store.
