If you’re anything like us, you land after a long plane journey, slightly shattered and attempting to adjust to your new time zone then once you’ve finally left passport control and picked up your bags, you simply want to grab a taxi and get to your hotel as quickly as possible.

To achieve this, many of choose to book an Uber. When the process works smoothly, everything is fine. But, sadly, Uber drivers aren’t always offered the same privileges as regular taxi’s, so you have to somehow navigate your way to a pickup location. To do this, a phone call from the driver is often required.

Message your driver and direct to a pickup location using the updated Uber

And this is where the problems start. Sometimes it’s noisy outside an airport or on the street, often you can’t always understand your driver or, worse, he can’t understand you. We’ve been in a situation where we’ve had 3 calls from a driver before we’ve been successfully picked up outside an airport.

Luckily, Uber has decided to implement in-app messaging between drivers and riders, meaning that a driver will be able to message you directly rather than face the prospect of making (often international) calls to pick you up. From today, the driver will be able to see who is waiting for pickup and your number and then any message you send back is read out loud to the driver whilst he finds his way to you. A driver can also respond to say he’s understood your instructions by sending a thumbs up.

Uber with in-app messaging should be updated today. Head to the Uber website for more information on the new feature.