What are Karhoo POIs?

Karhoo creates geofenced areas around Points of Interest (POI), such as Airports or Train Stations, creating Karhoo-POIs (K-POI).

This is needed to:

Send Fleets/DMS IDs or specific addresses of a given address
Support accurate pricing
To manage pickup and meeting points

Karhoo POIs (KPOIs) can hold additional information such as a the type of POI, default meeting point or IATA codes

Fleets can have specific pickup locations at these POIs. This information is configured by Karhoo and returned in the booking response.

Geofencing

Karhoo curates POIs and geofences their location. We call these Karhoo POIs (KPOI).
Current POIs relate to airports and train stations.
If a Location or address request falls within this geofence, Karhoo will interpret it as a POI.
Typically, Karhoo makes the geofence area larger than just the Terminal or Station to cover an area that might be included in Google Maps searches, such as nearby metro or bus stations.

Additional K-POI details during address details request

In case the address is within a KPOI the /address-details can return additional information, such as:

POI type (Airport, Train station, Port, Hotel, Other)
POI details (Terminal, IATA code)
Display name
The Karhoo Display Name and KPOI LatLong (Position) can be displayed to support visual identification of the location.

The Meeting Point can be used to display the meeting point, but it might change per Fleet (see next slides)

Address Details of a POI address in the Supply API

Getting address details may give the following response:

Address Details of a normal address

Getting address details may give the following return:

Fleet meeting points (Fleet POIs in the Demand API)

Karhoo does not enforce Meeting Points per Fleet and instead returns the Meeting Point that each Fleet handles. This is also because Taxis can have different meeting point regulations than Private Hire companies (PHV/VTC).

Therefore the booking response, /booking/{id} , may include a Fleet Meeting Point.
Note: it may be that the address slightly changes to best align with the Fleet’s system.

In case the Fleet does not have a specific instructions, the default Karhoo POI information will be returned.
In case there is no POI, then this information is blank/empty.

Booking API response
"meeting_point": {
    "position": {
      "latitude": 51.5086692,
      "longitude": -0.1375291
    },
    "type": "MEET_GREET",
    "instructions": "Please meet outside Costa Coffee",
    "note": "string"
... 
"origin": {
    "display_address": "Heathrow airport, LHR, Terminal 5",
    "position": {
      "latitude": 51.5086692,
      "longitude": -0.1375291
  },

The meeting_point is the precise meeting point coordinates supplied by the Fleet
The response included details of the pickup type and instructions for meeting the driver
address and position can be updated

Example of Fleet Meeting Points

Visualisation and examples of how Fleets can have different meeting points