· 2 min read
Hourly or point-to-point? Choosing the booking that fits your day
The most common booking mistake is not choosing the wrong vehicle — it is choosing the wrong booking type. Here is how to tell which one your day needs.
Almost every chauffeured booking is one of two shapes. Point-to-point: from A to B, quoted as a single journey. Hourly, sometimes called as-directed: a car and chauffeur held exclusively for you for a block of time, going wherever the day goes. Choosing wrongly is the most common and most expensive booking mistake people make.
Choose point-to-point when
- The journey is a straight line. Home to Pearson. Office to a client. Hotel to a venue.
- You know where it ends and it ends there.
- Nobody is waiting for you at either end.
It is the cheaper option for these journeys and it is the right one. Booking hourly for a simple airport run is money spent on nothing.
Choose hourly when
- There is more than one stop, or the number of stops is not yet settled.
- Somebody has to wait for you — a meeting that may run long, a viewing, a tasting, a dinner.
- You want your luggage, coats or shopping to stay in the vehicle between stops.
- The end of the day is genuinely unknown.
- You are running a roadshow, a plant tour, a diligence day or a wedding.
A minimum booking applies to hourly work, shorter inside the GTA than outside it, because the car and chauffeur are held exclusively for you and cannot be dispatched elsewhere. That is the whole value of it.
The arithmetic people get wrong
Four separate point-to-point bookings across one day almost always costs more than a single hourly engagement covering the same day — and it comes with four opportunities for something to go wrong, four different chauffeurs, and nowhere to leave a coat. If your day has three or more legs, ask us to price it both ways. We will show you both numbers even when the smaller one is ours to lose.
A hybrid worth knowing about
Some days genuinely want both: a point-to-point transfer in from the airport, then an hourly block for the meetings, then a point-to-point out to the hotel. That is a normal booking and it prices better than forcing the whole day into one shape. Describe the day and let us structure it.
