Pokemon catching shuttle service is booming

"Sit in an air-conditioned car, enjoy music, use mineral water to catch Pokemon... It's so safe and wonderful!!!" is one of the advertisements for Pokemon hunting shuttle services that are appearing in many provinces and cities.

According to many insiders, this service is doing quite well thanks to the lazy mentality of traveling, fear of phone snatching and traffic violations of some Pokemon GO players in Vietnam.

Ms. Da Thuong - an office worker who regularly uses Uber in Ho Chi Minh City said that these past few days, she was quite surprised when the driver enthusiastically introduced the service package of transporting people to catch Pokemon that the service operators came up with. Specifically, each car accepts to transport a maximum of 5-7 people to go through "Pokemon-rich" places in Ho Chi Minh City.

According to some drivers’ advertisements, each trip to catch Pokemon costs about 150,000 VND, guaranteed to catch 1-2 rare Pokemon. There will be countless common Pokemon.

A sample advertisement for a Pokemon catching shuttle service.

Not only Uber drivers, many family cars or contract cars in some localities such as: Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Nha Trang, Phan Thiet, Bien Hoa... also participate in opening this shuttle service. However, because these are spontaneous services, the prices and forms are different in each place.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Tan, who lives in Hoang Mai district, Hanoi, said that he has been running a home-to-home Pokemon catching service for a week. Customers can choose a 4-seat, 7-seat, or 16-seat car. The service price is calculated by the hour, the lowest is a 4-seat car (150,000 VND per hour) and the highest is a 16-seat car (250,000 VND). In his advertisement on his personal Facebook page, he also guarantees that users of the service will catch at least 1-2 rare Pokemon. Currently, he runs an average of 2 trips per day for this service.

"Customers are mainly people with money and free time, students all ride motorbikes," Mr. Tan added.

In Nha Trang and Phan Thiet, some contracted car operators provide services in the form of selling tickets. Each ticket ranges from 200,000 to 300,000 VND. The car will run continuously for 5 hours, pick up at home and be ready to take customers hunting at remote river, mountain and forest locations.

Meanwhile, some shuttle services for Pokemon hunting in Bien Hoa (Dong Nai) have strict agreements on both time and distance. For example, if you want to rent a car for 4 hours, traveling a total of 50km, the player will spend about 700,000 VND. The price will increase according to the time and distance that the customer needs to travel.

Not only cars, some motorbike owners also join this game. The usual price is about 100,000 VND for a trip, lasting from 2 to 4 hours. The service provider also promises to take you to places where rare Pokemon often appear, areas with many PokeStops and also promotes the role of reminding and warning of robberies.

Even the ride-hailing service GrabBike has also organized activities following the Pokemon hunting trend. Recently, this unit launched a program to give discount codes to riders to go to the locations of Grab's Pokemon event. At those locations, the company arranged thousands of Lure (a tool to help attract Pokemon to PokeStop within 30 minutes) for customers to come and hunt.

Previously, Pokemon Go shuttle services have also appeared in some countries around the world. Last month, Reuters reported that a 29-year-old driver in Minatitlan, Veracruz (Mexico) named Emilio Cacho had launched his own service called Poketaxi. He charged more than 7 USD for the first kilometer of Pokemon hunting and lower for the following kilometers. In just one week after Pokemon GO was available in this country, he received about 20 calls requesting the Poketaxi service.

According to VNE