“Download the application and benefit from the Cityscoot service in Paris”
: here is the SMS message sent by Cooltra this Monday morning to former Cityscoot subscribers.
The Spanish operator of self-service electric scooters has just taken over its French competitor, and is now trying to attract the approximately 250,000 active users declared by Cityscoot, left orphans almost overnight.
It is precisely to retain these valuable customers that Cooltra wishes to facilitate their transfer to their service.
To benefit from it, they simply have to download the Cooltra application and follow the connection instructions.
Since this weekend, Cityscoot users can access the electric scooter rental service via the Cooltra application, with the same identifiers that they used for Cityscoot.
“We worked together with Cityscoot to ensure that each user’s account was validated as is. All you have to do is download our application, indicating the username and password used at Cityscoot, and in doing so, without modification, everyone has access to their entire customer account
,” confirms Fabien Douay, the director and spokesperson. word France from Cooltra, which adds that the credits were also automatically transferred to the new accounts.
Also read: How Cityscoot, the French leader in self-service electric scooters, slipped
A fleet of 1,800 scooters at a lower price
But be careful, Cityscoot's electric scooters will disappear from the Ile-de-France landscape, since its buyer has only planned to rely on its own fleet made up of 1,500 to 1,800 two-wheelers and does not intend to take over that of its competitor.
“Quite simply because the liquidation of Cityscoot is partly due to the dilapidated state of its fleet
,” explains the France director of Cooltra.
As for whether his service will be able to absorb the additional demand, the spokesperson seems optimistic.
And to specify:
“for the moment, the current fleet which we operate in the middle of winter is not at its highest level.
But we do not rule out increasing the number of our scooters from 1800 to 2400 maximum in the spring
.
In terms of prices, those offered by Cooltra are
“slightly lower”
than those charged by Cityscoot for an equivalent geographical area.
“We have chosen to keep our usual rates, at 39 cents per minute and 27 cents per minute when purchasing packs
,” explains Fabien Douay.
That is, a 30-minute ride can range from 8.10 to 11.70 euros at Cooltra, compared to 9 to 13.80 euros at Cityscoot.
For the rest,
“there is no change.
The idea was that the Cityscoot user could find exactly the same service at Cooltra
,” he says happily.
A brand image to maintain
As for the image of the brand, it will remain
“Cityscoot by Cooltra”
to the extent that
“many Parisians had gotten into the habit of saying “I take a Cityscoot” and not “I rent a scooter””
, explains we say internally at Cooltra, well aware of the commercial value of someone who was quite simply considered the pioneer of shared mobility in Paris and market leader in the capital and its inner suburbs.
However, Cooltra is far from being new to the free-floating galaxy.
The Spanish operator, which announces a turnover of 46.8 million euros in 2022 and more than 7 million euros in Ebitda in 2023, can also boast of being installed in eight other European cities: in Barcelona, Madrid, Seville and Valencia, in Spain, but also in Milan, Rome and Turin, in Italy, as well as in Lisbon, in Portugal.
An important network which allows it to display good financial solidity,
“a reliable guarantee to ensure the continuity of the Cityscoot brand and meet user demand”
, the group boasted.