What a Chauffeur Day Rate in London Actually Gets You

Most people think of a chauffeur as something you book to get from A to B. A car arrives, takes you somewhere, and the job is finished. That is one way to use us, and it is the way most people start. It is also the smallest part of what we do.

The larger part is hourly and daily hire, where the car and the driver are yours for a fixed block of time and you stop thinking about transport altogether. It is the arrangement that suits almost anyone with a day full of moving parts, and it is consistently misunderstood. This is a plain explanation of how it works, what it includes and when it makes sense.

The basic idea

With hourly hire you book the vehicle and the chauffeur for a set number of hours rather than for a single journey. Within that time you go wherever you need to go, as often as you need to go there. The car waits for you between stops. There is no second booking to make, no fare to agree each time, and nobody watching a meter while you finish a conversation.

Bookings usually start at a minimum of a few hours and run up to a full day. A full day is typically eight to ten hours, and it can start wherever suits you, whether that is your home at seven in the morning or a hotel in Mayfair at midday.

What is included

The quoted rate covers the vehicle, the chauffeur, fuel and insurance, along with congestion and ULEZ charges within the agreed area. Waiting time is the whole point of the arrangement, so it is built into the rate rather than added on top. Bottled water, phone charging and wifi are standard in the car.

What sits outside the rate is straightforward and we tell you before you book: parking charges where a car cannot be held nearby, any travel beyond the area you booked for, and time beyond the hours you reserved. Overruns are charged at the hourly rate in the same increments, so a meeting that drags on for forty minutes costs what forty minutes costs and nothing more.

Who actually books it

The most common user is a director with a day of meetings spread across London. Four or five appointments between the City, Canary Wharf and the West End used to mean the Elizabeth line and a walk in the rain, or a series of separate cars with a wait for each one. With hourly hire the same day becomes one booking. You work between stops, leave your coat and papers in the car, and arrive at the fourth meeting looking the same as you did at the first.

The second is visiting clients and colleagues from overseas. Someone flying in for two days of meetings, or a delegation being shown the business, does not know the city and should not be spending their trip working out how to get to Stratford. Putting a car and a driver at their disposal for the duration is the simplest hospitality there is, and it reflects on the company hosting them.

Then there are the personal bookings, which are a bigger share of our work than people assume. Theatre and dinner in the West End without the walk to the car park. A day of Christmas shopping with somewhere to put the bags. A family visit to see relatives across two or three counties. Weddings, where the car is needed at the house, then the church, then the reception, with long gaps in between that no point-to-point booking handles sensibly. Race days and sporting fixtures, where the return journey is the part that matters and a pre-booked car waiting nearby is worth more than the outward leg.

When it is cheaper than booking separately

This is the part that surprises people. If your day involves more than three or four journeys, hourly hire is usually the cheaper option, not the expensive one.

Point-to-point pricing has to cover the driver getting to you and the empty running afterwards, so every separate booking carries that cost again. Book five journeys and you pay for that five times over. Book the day and you pay for it once. Add the time you spend waiting for each car to arrive, and the occasions when one does not, and the comparison moves further in the same direction.

The other saving is less visible but usually larger. An executive who can work in the back of a car between appointments recovers most of the day that would otherwise be lost to getting around. That is the actual return on a day rate, and it is why finance directors who look at the line item properly tend to approve it.

Choosing the vehicle

Most bookings go out in an executive saloon, typically a Mercedes E-Class or the equivalent, which comfortably seats two passengers and their luggage. For three or four passengers travelling together, or where the day involves cases, samples or equipment, a people carrier such as a V-Class gives everyone room without anyone sitting with a bag on their knees. For occasions where the car is part of the impression, an S-Class does that job.

We will tell you which one your day needs rather than quoting the largest vehicle by default.
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The part an app cannot do

Every booking is handled by an in-house dispatch team who speak to the driver through the day. If your second meeting finishes early, someone moves the car. If it overruns by an hour, someone tells the driver and rearranges the rest of the day around it. If a flight lands late or a train is cancelled, the change is being managed before you have thought to mention it. That is a person making decisions about your day, not an algorithm reassigning the nearest available car to someone else.

It also means you have a number to call that is answered by someone who already knows your booking. For most of our corporate clients, that is the reason they moved to us and the reason they stay.

Accounts and regular bookings

Companies that use us more than occasionally move onto an account, which means monthly invoicing rather than paying per journey, cost centre references on each booking so the finance team can allocate spend properly, and an agreed rate card. Individual travellers can have their preferences held on file, so the car arrives set up the way they like it without anyone asking again.

Regular standing bookings, the same journey at the same time each week, are priced accordingly.

Booking one

Tell us the date, roughly when you want to start and what the day involves. We will tell you how many hours to book and which vehicle fits, and give you a fixed price before you commit. If the day changes, it changes, and we work around it.

Airport Executive has been arranging chauffeured travel for over 35 years, and operates under TfL Private Hire Operator Licence 402. Airports are part of what we do, but they are not the whole of it. If your working day would be easier with a car and a driver in it, that is the service to ask us about.

Book your London chauffeur here or call our reservations team on +44 (0)208 838 3333.

Airport Executive, a better way to travel.