Hire a driver for a day

When you hire a driver for a day you book time rather than a journey. The driver and vehicle stay with you for the agreed period, you set the stops as the day goes, and nothing is re-booked between them. It is a different product from a transfer, and it is cheaper only past a certain number of stops.

Hourly hire is not a series of transfers

A transfer is a journey: one pickup, one destination, one price fixed before you travel. Hourly hire is availability: the vehicle and driver are yours for the block, and the route is whatever you decide during it.

The distinction is not marketing. In France it is the statutory definition of the service — Article L3122-1 of the Code des transports describes a VTC operator as one whose activity consists of placing vehicles and their drivers at the disposal of clients, subject to prior booking. Under French law the hourly service is not a variant of the transfer; the transfer is a variant of it. The same article confirms that pricing may be either a fixed sum agreed at the time of order or calculated on duration and distance afterwards, which is what makes time-based pricing lawful in the first place.

What does not change is the booking requirement. Prior booking remains the condition of the whole activity, and a driver on hourly hire cannot pick up anybody else during your block — not a passer-by, not a colleague hailing from the pavement. The vehicle is committed to you for the duration.

When it costs less than booking separate journeys

There is a crossover point, and knowing roughly where it sits saves money in both directions.

Every separate transfer includes the cost of getting a vehicle to you and away again afterwards. That repositioning is invisible in the price but real, and you pay it once per booking. Hourly hire has that cost once for the whole block, then charges for time.

The last row matters more than the arithmetic. If your schedule is fixed and known, transfers are usually efficient. If it is going to change during the day — a meeting overruns, a site visit is added, a flight moves — hourly hire absorbs that at no extra cost, while separate bookings have to be cancelled and rebooked at whatever is available.

What a booking includes, and what it does not

Hourly hire is priced by the block you set, and the booking holds three things.

• The block itself, which you set. You choose a start time and an end time; the quick buttons offer thirty minutes, one, two and three hours, and you can type any end time instead.
• One price for that block, quoted by a driver. Hourly requests are not priced automatically, so a driver reads yours and offers against it, and the price you accept is the price you pay.
• One driver and one vehicle for the whole block. A return leg cannot be attached to an hourly booking; if you need the car again later that evening, book the second block as its own request.

Fuel, tolls and the driver's time are inside the price. Parking is the item to ask about, because on a city day it is a real cost and it is incurred repeatedly — see the next section. Congestion and emissions charges, and airport access fees where the day touches an airport, are usually passed through.

Extending on the day is normally possible but never guaranteed: your driver may have a booking after yours. If you suspect the day will run long, book the longer block at the start. A longer block is quoted up front and you know what it costs, whereas time added on the day is agreed there and then, and neither costs as much as being left without a vehicle at seven in the evening.

Where the driver waits

Nothing about hourly hire surprises people more, and it is worth understanding before the first long stop.

The vehicle cannot simply sit at the kerb outside wherever you are. City parking rules apply to it exactly as they would to your own car, and in most European city centres that means loading bays, restricted zones and cameras rather than free waiting. Several markets additionally restrict private hire vehicles from waiting on the public highway in a way that resembles touting for passengers — in France, Article L3122-9 prohibits parking on the public road while waiting for clients, and enforcement is concentrated around airports and major stations.

The practical consequence: on a stop of more than a few minutes, the driver relocates to legal parking and returns when you call. That is normal and it is not the driver being unhelpful.

Two things make it work smoothly. Give the driver notice — "about an hour" lets them park properly rather than circling. And agree a pickup point for each stop rather than assuming they will be where they dropped you, particularly outside restaurants, theatres and anywhere with a taxi rank, where stopping is often prohibited outright.

What people actually use it for

• A day of meetings. The reason the product exists. Several addresses, unpredictable overruns, documents and coats left in the car between stops.
• Waiting during an appointment. Medical, legal, official — anything where you do not know whether you will be forty minutes or three hours.
• An event. Weddings, ceremonies and celebrations where the vehicle is needed at both ends and at unpredictable moments in between.
• Touring on your own itinerary. You choose where to stop and how long, which is the difference between this and a fixed sightseeing route.
• A moving day of errands. Several destinations, luggage or purchases accumulating in the car rather than carried.

What it does not suit is a single long journey between two cities. That is a transfer, priced on distance, and hourly hire will cost more for the same trip.

How to hire a driver for a day

Give the shape of the day rather than the exact plan, since the plan is the thing most likely to change.

• Start time and place, and your best estimate of the finish.
• Roughly how many stops and whether any involve a long wait.
• Passengers and luggage, which determine the vehicle as they would on any booking — see vehicle classes.
• Anything special: a child seat, mobility equipment, an animal, something bulky staying in the car all day.
• Whether the day starts or ends at an airport, so that leg can be timed around your flight.

If your itinerary is genuinely fixed and sightseeing is the purpose, day trips may fit better — a planned route with known stops, priced accordingly.