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| London Heathrow Chauffeur |
At the same time, London is currently seeing a glut of app-driven chauffeur service providers-companies that do the same thing, but claim to work with established partner companies, offering a digital booking service that promises to drive business the way of established firms.
The latest is Blacklane, a fast-growing German company that has wasted no time in driving into the UK. Here's what company's founders have to say: "We work in close partnership with local limousine service providers, bringing additional business rather than generating competition."
Sounds fair, but somewhere down the line, Blacklane is going to want to take a cut for its trouble. Same applies to America's Uber, which is trying out a broadly similar service. At least these companies are pretty transparent-you can see the fares they charge, so it's up to the chauffeur company to agree to the fee they'll receive from Blacklane or Uber.
It's a bit different with some of the less professional brokers, where a low-priced tender for, say, an airport pick-up is offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The good operators will probably refuse this work, and it'll be the fag-end of the market operator that'll pick up the job.
The customer thinks he's getting a good deal, but wait till he sees the scruffy driver in his football shirt and slip flops. (Well done, by the way, to Maidstone Council for introducing a dress code to smarted up its drivers!) Meanwhile the decent local operators miss out on a job. Everybody loses except the broker.
Now we'd like to see a more regional approach to taxi and PHV licensing based on the London PCO model, but at least the current fragmented mess ensures that cross-border operations are reasonably well controlled. Yet there are local councils that seem to think it's OK to license an operator that is plying for trade on the internet many miles outside his nominal base.
If any of this sounds familiar, it's one of the main causes for the demise of the stretch limo market, where a small number of brokers, expert in search engine optimisation, mean anyone trying to book one of these vehicles online cannot escape their clutches.
Again, price is king, and the customer has no contact with the actual company that will handle the job. The broker may seem professional, but the job could be allocated to any dodgy operator that's prepared to take it. And remember, much of this business exists outside any licensing regime. No wonder VOSA keeps on sending those Town Cars to the crusher.
If we're not careful, we could be facing a similar situation in the licensed private hire and chauffeur sector. Let's hope the Law Commission is keeping up with these trends, and incorporates a sensible strategy in its review, preferably with regional "PCOs" centred on major cities.
Meanwhile, you don't have to get hooked into the brokers there are plenty of companies that will develop an app for you. and that way you can compete online for business that 100% yours.
