COVID-19’s Impact to Finland Taxi Industry

Aalto doc - Paper (pdf)

This study traces the impact of COVID-19 pandemics to the taxi industry in Finland. A 14-year subset of taxi shifts data is provided thanks to Trafore Oy. During this study, COVID-19 pandemics was estimated using indicators such as Google Trend search interest for keyword “COVID”, as well as the daily new cases of COVID-19 in Finland. Regarding the taxi industry, taxi revenue per shifts and number of shifts are used as a performance indicator. The study found a strongly negative correlation between taxi revenue per shift and Google search interest. On the demand side, the taxi revenue per shift experienced a staggering drop of 70% within March but has gradually increased since. However, taxi revenue per shift but failed to reach the rate of previous years. The impact of COVID-19 is the most apparent from March to June, and from September onwards, with March and April being the most affected months in terms of taxi revenue per shifts. With the obtained insights from the study, an attempt to predict the taxi revenue rate was made using Prophet. However, the upcoming future of the taxi industry is difficult to predict, with disruptive changes on the horizon, such as the end of COVID-19 pandemics and further changes to the taxi regulation.