home…..home again
- Posted by Raul on July 27th, 2007 filed in Services, Tourism and travel, Transportation
Business Opportunity: Affordable transportation services from the airport
Arriving from the airport and confronting all those taxi drivers may be scary; specially if you do not know the different transport alternatives that are being offered. The way taxi drivers operate is perfectly legal, but some times that may be different from fair. Arriving to a country and feel that in your first interaction you are being treated unfairly may give you a very bad first impression.
It is common for hotels to have a shuttle system; they pick passengers from the hotel and take them to the airport. A good idea would be to reverse this service and make it available for anyone. The operation should be that a small shuttle fits four to five passengers, and for a flat rate, it delivers everybody home. People will take a bit longer to get home, but they will be happy to sacrifice some minutes for a noticeable lower rate. It is also a good business for the shuttle driver, by charging smaller fees to a bigger group each trip will add more than a single passenger trip and he will only spend few minutes more in the van.
Written by Raul
July 27th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
There already is a public transportation line (783) that does that
July 27th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I don’t think the public transportation line LexArrow mentioned would be a good substitute. The passengers - just coming from the airport - will not want to pay full fare for a taxi but… will also not want to drag their luggage onto a bus and then have to transfer to a different line to get them home.
I’ll post some more comments on this shortly.
July 28th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
I added a new posting for this.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:03 pm
As Steve mention before, you can take the bus, but still need to walk; you may arrive a Sunday at midnight, tired, and don’t want to carry your luggage around, but also, don’t want to expect the 90 Lei a cab will charge. This is an option in between, presenting a win-win situation for the van driver and the passengers, at least how I see it…
August 1st, 2007 at 12:14 pm
There has been an auction awhile ago organized by the Bucharest City Hall for the cab company that will be allowed to transport people from the airport to the city.What you suggest, tough useful, it may be hard to implement, because somebody paid big money to have exclusivity
August 1st, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Sky Taxi seems to have exclusivity contracts for places such as the airport and key hotels (Marriott, etc).
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Thanks for your comments. Sad to listen that people don’t have too many option from where to chose after those agreements have been made, but that happens everywhere….