Satellite navigation is at the heart of ride-hailing services across the world and Vaya Africa, an on-demand mobile and web application that focuses on moving goods and people from one point to another in Zimbabwe so as to broaden its reach by launching a new navigation system in addition to the traditional Google maps.
Since inception, the Vaya Africa partners have predominantly been relying on the Google maps navigation system to take passengers and goods around. Google maps offer basic street mapping, real-time traffic conditions, and route planning amongst other services.
Fundamentally, at the core of navigation systems is the ability to not only provide directions to drivers but to ensure passengers reach their intended destinations at the least possible time. After consolidating the experiences of using google maps by Vaya partners, VAYA Africa has now launched a new navigation option for its partners called WAZE.
WAZE is a community-driven GPS navigation application that provides turn by turn navigation and user-submitted travel times and route details to assist fellow drivers in real-time. Some of the benefits of this service are to allow drivers to alert other drivers of accidents, road closures, and police sighting. It also has speed monitoring capabilities that alert drivers when they are going too fast, and the ability to remember commonly used routes, and identifying free parking spaces amongst many other benefits.
The VAYA partners have hailed the launch of the WAZE navigation system stating its unique offerings that have taken the industry by storm.
VAYA Africa CEO, Mrs. Dorothy Zimuto said, “The introduction of WAZE as a navigation option for our Vaya partners is to ensure drivers avoid impediments that might affect the experience of their passengers as they move from point to point.”
WAZE also brings out the convenience for passengers and even people who are not on Vaya to navigate and get information on best roads, shortest routes, etc. It is therefore very difficult to compare the 2 navigation systems. If it is just about driving, WAZE’s clean maps, live traffic reports and parking notifications give it an edge, but for all-round features, Google maps take the lead.