Brands
Swiggy Dineout, Diners Club launch luxe food festival across India
MUMBAI: Swiggy Dineout and The Diners Club by HDFC Bank are rolling out a delicious celebration for food lovers, marking 75 years of the iconic Diners Club brand with a festival that spans ten cities and countless tables.
Called The Diners Club: Gourmet Edit, the event brings together Swiggy Dineout’s premium network and HDFC Bank’s Diners Club card holders for what is being billed as India’s most exclusive dining festival. Running until 21 December 2025, it promises standout flavours, plush settings and deals designed to tempt even the fussiest foodie.
Cardholders can tuck into discounts of up to 50 per cent on reservations made through Swiggy Dineout, followed by an extra 15 per cent off when paying with a Diners Club by HDFC Bank credit card. The offers apply across a curated roster of luxury hotels and fine dining favourites, including The Leela, ITC Hotels, Novotel, Hyatt and The Ritz-Carlton in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh.
Taking part is a simple three-step dance: pick a restaurant from the Gourmet Edit collection on Swiggy Dineout, purchase the deal, and settle the bill at the venue using the Diners Club card. The more you indulge, the merrier it gets. Each week, the top 25 spenders will earn complimentary access to one Swiggy Scenes luxe event, turning a night out into a night to remember.
Swiggy Dineout senior vice president and business head Swapnil Bajpai, said the partnership aims to elevate dining from a routine outing to a memorable moment. Bajpai noted that pairing Swiggy Dineout’s network of over 700 luxury restaurants with the legacy of The Diners Club allows the companies to offer both value and experience, creating a festival that delights on and off the plate.
Swiggy Dineout, which operates in more than 50 cities with over 50,000 restaurants on its platform, continues to position itself as a go-to destination for diners seeking effortless reservations and rewarding culinary adventures. With the Gourmet Edit, it hopes to serve not only great meals but great memories too.
Brands
Uber launches hotel bookings feature in partnership with Expedia
From hotel bookings to room service at your door, the ride-hailing giant is making its boldest push yet into everyday life
CALIFORNIA: Uber is done being just a taxi app. At its annual GO-GET product event, the world’s leading mobility and delivery platform unveiled a sweeping set of new features designed to plant itself at the centre of how people travel, eat and shop, hotel bookings included.
The headline move is a partnership with Expedia Group that lets Uber users in the United States book hotels directly within the Uber app, with access to a catalogue that will eventually grow to more than 700,000 properties worldwide. Uber One members get 10 per cent back in Uber One credits on all hotel bookings and savings of at least 20 per cent on a rolling list of more than 10,000 hotels globally. Vacation rentals from Vrbo, Expedia Group’s home-rental brand, will be added later this year. The partnership is expected to expand beyond the United States. From June, Uber rides will also be integrated directly into the Expedia app, with push notifications sent to travellers ahead of hotel check-in to book discounted Uber rides for the duration of their stay.
Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber, framed the expansion in terms of the modern condition. “Uber is becoming an app for everything, helping people go, get, and now travel all in one place,” he said. “We’re all living through a moment of real cognitive overload: too many apps, too many decisions, too much noise. At the end of the day, our job is to help people reclaim their time, spending less of it managing the logistics of life and more of it actually living.”
Ariane Gorin, chief executive of Expedia Group, struck a similarly ambitious note. “Travel should feel effortless, and this partnership gets us one step closer to offering a seamless traveller experience,” she said. “By connecting our two-sided marketplace with Uber, we’re bringing Uber rides directly into the Expedia app and Expedia Group’s lodging inventory into the Uber app through our Rapid API technology. Together, we’re helping travellers spend less time planning and more time enjoying the journey.”
Beyond hotels, the product announcements come thick and fast. Travel Mode, available within both the Uber and Uber Eats apps, offers curated recommendations on local favourites, tourist destinations, OpenTable restaurant reservations and on-demand delivery to hotel rooms. Uber One International means the membership programme now works globally, allowing members to earn credits on rides abroad that can be redeemed once back home. A new Shop for Me feature lets users request items from any store, even those not listed on the app. Eats for the Way allows riders in select cities booking an Uber Black or Uber Black SUV to have a drink or snack waiting for them in the car. Voice Bookings, powered by artificial intelligence, lets users book a ride conversationally, without touching their phone. And a redesigned One Search bar consolidates results for places, food and items across the entire Uber platform in a single query.
Uber has now logged more than 72 billion trips since it launched in 2010. The question it is now answering is what comes after the ride. The answer, apparently, is everything else. Whether users want a hotel in Paris, a coffee in the back of a car or a snake plant from the local garden centre, Uber would very much like to be the one to provide it. The app economy’s land grab has a new front-runner.
NOTE: The image used is AI generated and only for representational purposes.
