What is the difference between kerbside pickup and meet and greet?
Kerbside means the chauffeur waits nearby and comes to the designated pickup area when you ring to say you are outside. Meet and greet means the chauffeur parks, walks in, and is standing in arrivals with your name on a board when you emerge. The second costs the car park fee; the first does not.
Category
Airports
Contact
+44 7775 554848 or info@firstclass-chauffeurs.co.uk
01/The short answer
Kerbside means the chauffeur waits nearby and comes to the designated pickup area when you ring to say you are outside. Meet and greet means the chauffeur parks, walks in, and is standing in arrivals with your name on a board when you emerge. The second costs the car park fee; the first does not.
Both are proper collections, and the choice is genuinely situational rather than a question of paying for a better version. A frequent traveller with hand luggage at Terminal 5 is often better off kerbside. A guest landing at six after eleven hours is not.
QA-01/How each one actually plays out
How each one actually plays out
Kerbside: you clear customs, walk out through the terminal, follow the signs to the pickup area, and ring the chauffeur. The car arrives within a few minutes, the bags go in, and you leave. It works well when you have done it before at that airport.
Meet and greet: you walk through the doors and someone is holding a board with your name. The bags change hands there, and the walk to the car happens with company. Nothing has to be navigated, and nobody has to make a phone call.
Kerbside: no car park fee, you reach the pickup area yourself
Meet and greet: car park fee at cost, you are met inside
Both are quoted at the same transfer fare
Both carry the same free waiting allowance
Both are tracked against the flight from departure
QA-02/When kerbside is the better choice
When kerbside is the better choice
Regular travellers at a familiar airport, hand luggage only, and a phone that works on landing. Under those conditions the walk out is trivial and the fee is money for nothing. Business travellers on a weekly route almost all end up kerbside.
It is also better at airports where the pickup area is close to the exit. At the smaller terminals the walk is a couple of minutes and the difference between the two arrangements is almost invisible.
QA-03/When to pay for the meet
When to pay for the meet
Guests, first visits, overnight arrivals, families with children, anyone with several cases, and anyone landing somewhere they do not speak the language. In all of those the walk to a pickup area is the part of the journey where things go wrong.
It is also the right answer when you are booking on somebody else's behalf and want to know they were collected. A meet inside the hall is confirmable; a kerbside pickup depends on a phone call from a passenger who may be exhausted.
QA-04/Deciding without overthinking it
Deciding without overthinking it
Ask one question: would I rather make a phone call or be met. If the answer is genuinely either, take kerbside and save the fee. If there is any hesitation, take the meet, because the fee is small against the value of not having to think on arrival.
You can also change your mind. Booked kerbside and landed feeling dreadful, ring the chauffeur and ask them to come in. It takes a few minutes and the car park fee is simply added at cost.
No. The published fixed fare is the same either way, and the only difference on the invoice is the short stay car park fee where a meet took place. It is passed through at cost rather than marked up as a service charge.
How long does a kerbside chauffeur take to reach the pickup area?
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Usually a few minutes, since the car waits nearby rather than off the airport. At the larger terminals in the middle of a busy arrivals bank it can be longer, and the chauffeur will tell you a realistic figure when you ring rather than an optimistic one.
Which works better when the flight is very delayed?
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Kerbside, marginally, because the car is not accumulating a car park fee while it waits. In practice the tracking handles both: the chauffeur is repositioned rather than parked, and the collection is rebuilt around the actual landing.
Tell us the journey. We will send the price in writing.
Message us the date, the pick-up and where you are going. You will get a fixed written quotation with the vehicle, the chauffeur’s arrival time and what the figure includes — no form to fill in, and no estimate that moves later.
