As Yango’s independent driver in Peru, you have a lot of control. You set your own hours and work days, giving you the work-life balance that you’re happy with. This also means that your effective hourly rate can go higher or lower based on the value of your completed bookings.

That’s where surge zones come in. Used right, this can be an effective tool for improving your payout.

These are areas where the demand from passengers is significantly higher than the number of drivers willing to work in the area. When this happens, Yango applies a surge multiplier to the base fare to incentivize and encourage drivers to fulfill the demand.

In Peru, there’s no official list of places that fall under this category. But if our system sees that disparity in supply and demand, the app will automatically apply the surge multiplier to the booking request.

These areas aren’t random places in Peru. After looking at the information on the country’s surge areas, we believe that they’re largely tied to human activity. High-demand areas tend to be associated with the following:

• Arrival and departure areas. Places like airports and bus stations see a lot of foot traffic, with people coming and going all the time. To make the trip worth it for drivers like you, rates tend to be higher here.
• Closing of establishments. For example, many people may wait until closing time to leave a mall. The many people booking at the same time increases the demand more than usual.
• Beginning and end of the work day. Workers who rely on ride-hailing apps to get around tend to require the services at the same times every day. So, even if an area doesn't see a lot of activity throughout the day, it may suddenly see a lot of demand during these window hours.
• High level of interest in the place. These include tourist areas and other places that are generally popular. So, there will generally be more booking requests there, too.

In rare cases, high-demand areas may even appear to be not-so-busy. But if there are even fewer drivers to cater to the requests from passengers, then there’s technically a high demand.

Drivers in Peru see an increased gross income. This is because trips with pickup points within surge zones tend to be priced higher. For example, a ride that’s usually worth 20 PEN may become 23 PEN. Assuming the same 10 trips of the same value, you get an additional 30 PEN.

However, you should still account for their potential costs. For example, the trips may generally be longer because of heavy traffic, which means more wear and tear. This is especially true if you need to constantly accelerate and decelerate because of traffic. But generally, even with the potential opportunity cost, Peruvian drivers still get net benefits.