Recently the market has started to become flooded with cheap airport transfers, most of the drivers are untrained and more importantly many of them don’t carry the correct level of insurance.

We have seen prices slashed below the cost of running the vehicles and while this does attract some customers in the short term, it is unsustainable. These inexperienced drivers then realise that they are not covering their costs, so they take on more work, cut costs and corners, than start being late for jobs or drive like idiots thereby giving professional chauffeurs a bad name. Worst of all, their clients start having to run for flights, or even miss them! Then the penny drops with client and driver, the price charged by a quality company has a reason, the costs directly relate to the level of service provided.

There are no short cuts in the professional chauffeur world,  it requires a high level of skill and service combined with good time management. The role of the chauffeur revolves around knowledge of passenger requirements, we sometimes ask clients to leave home 15 minutes earlier than normal,  its not just because we like getting people out of bed, but because we know the traffic or road conditions require it.

A good chauffeur learns what their regular passengers expect and need, in this respect we regard it as viatally important to build a strong working relationship between ourselves and all of our clients. This is where the proessional chauffer makes a difference to the business traveller.

It does a 100mph, but it only has a range of 40 miles, not much use to a chauffeur! Tunbridge Wells to Heathrow is 62 miles, each way so you can see the problem.

To be honest I don’t think we will replace our Mercedes yet, as the only real ‘green’ option is the Lexus hybrid.

Great they all thought, get home early! Not the case, they had all been put onto late running flights given the airlines space to transfer some of their clients that where complaining about their flights been late. All three planes landed over an hour later than their original flight did!

So the moral is, if it seems to be too good, it probably is. On top of that, you get a early flight, your driver might not be available to meet it, so you would have to wait for him or catch a cab, then have his cancellation fee to pay as well!

Happy flying and happy Easter.

If you have any comments please feel free to reply to my posts, we do ask that you register as a user before you can write comments. I hope you guys understand, it’s because we don’t want to have the weblog fill up with spam.