Hourly chauffeur service is a car and a professional chauffeur reserved for a block of consecutive hours - a minimum of two or three depending on the city - at a fixed hourly rate that includes the chauffeur's time, the vehicle, tolls, parking and gratuity, with a distance allowance per hour. The chauffeur waits at every stop and goes wherever the day goes. RutzLimo.com offers it in every vehicle class in 107 countries; book by the hour on this page.
When by-the-hour beats point-to-point
Point-to-point fares suit journeys with a known beginning and end: the airport run, the dinner reservation. The moment a day acquires three or more stops, or the timing of the next stop depends on how the current one goes, the hourly service is the better product and usually the cheaper one. Four point-to-point fares across a city, each with the chauffeur travelling empty to reach you, cost more than four hours with a chauffeur who never leaves. And the hourly engagement carries something point-to-point cannot: your bags stay in the boot, the car is outside when you walk out, and nobody is watching an app for a driver who has just cancelled.
The days that book by the hour, in the order we see them:
- A day of meetings in a city you do not know, with a chauffeur who knows which tower has which entrance.
- A site or property tour with several stops and an agent or a colleague in the car.
- An evening - dinner, a show, a bar - where the end time is unknowable at 6 p.m.
- A long layover: collected at arrivals, a meeting or a meal in the city, returned to departures.
- A shopping day in Milan, Paris, London or Dubai, with bags accumulating in the boot.
- A sightseeing day for a family, at the family's pace rather than a tour's.
- A media or roadshow day: five interviews or investor meetings, the schedule changing hourly.
For engagements longer than a day, the private chauffeur service assigns one chauffeur for the week or the month; for a single transfer, the black car service is the simpler booking.
How the hourly engagement works
Book on the engine with a start address, a start time and the number of hours; choose the vehicle class; the fixed hourly rate and the total for the block are shown before you confirm. The engagement begins when the chauffeur arrives at the start address at the reserved time, and the clock runs continuously until you release the car - there is no pausing the meter while you are in a meeting, because the chauffeur is waiting for you. Hours beyond the block are charged at the same rate, in fifteen-minute increments, and dispatch will tell you when you are approaching the end of the reserved block so you can extend or release.
Each hour carries a distance allowance - typically 20 kilometres or 12 miles in the city, more on a touring engagement - and distance beyond it is charged per kilometre or mile at the rate on the confirmation. Tolls, parking and the chauffeur's gratuity are included. Minimums are two hours in most cities and three in a few, and the engine shows the minimum for the city you enter.
Choosing the class for an hourly day
Every class on the engine can be booked by the hour, and the choice follows the day. An executive sedan is the right car for one or two people and a day of offices. A luxury sedan - an S-Class or a 7 Series - is the choice when the passenger will work in the back for hours, or when the passengers are a client and their host. An executive SUV takes a family or a small team with the shopping, and the executive van with its facing seats turns the journey between meetings into a meeting. Groups of eight to fourteen book the Sprinter by the hour for site visits and evenings out. The fleet guide has every class in detail.
The hourly chauffeur at airports and layovers
A layover of five or six hours in a gateway city is a half day in the city if the transport is certain, and the hourly engagement is how frequent flyers use it: the chauffeur is at arrivals with the flight tracked under the airport limo rules, the bags go in the boot, the passenger has lunch or a meeting in the city, and the chauffeur returns them to departures with the margin the airport recommends. Dispatch knows the minimum connection times and the immigration arrangements for layover passengers at each of the 346 airports on the engine, and will tell you honestly when a layover is too short to leave.
Hourly chauffeur service for business
Corporate clients use the hourly service constantly - it is the product for the visiting executive's day, the roadshow, the board member's day in the city, the client entertainment evening - and on a corporate account the hourly engagement is booked by an assistant against the traveller's profile, coded to a cost centre and itemised on the monthly invoice with the hours and the distance. The executive car service page describes how the account works; the event transportation team plans multi-vehicle hourly days for delegations and roadshows.
Hourly chauffeur service for leisure
A family with a chauffeur and an SUV for a day in Rome, a couple with a sedan for a day in the Napa vineyards, three friends with a Sprinter for the Cotswolds, a grandparent with a sedan for a day of galleries in Vienna at a gallery's pace: the hourly engagement is the way to see a city or a region without a hire car, a tour bus or a taxi rank. Chauffeurs are not licensed guides and will not pretend to be - in cities where licensed guides are required at monuments, dispatch can arrange one through the network - but they know the city, the parking, the restaurants and the way round the traffic, and a chauffeur's day in Florence or Kyoto is a very different day from a coach's.
What an hourly chauffeur costs
Rates are set by city and by class, fixed on the engine, and inclusive of tolls, parking and gratuity; the chauffeur cost guide gives the hourly benchmarks for the executive sedan, SUV and luxury sedan across North America, Europe, the Gulf and Asia, with the sources for each, and the chauffeur vs Uber Black guide addresses the hourly product specifically, where the app has no real equivalent. As a rule of thumb, three or more stops in a city makes the hourly engagement the cheaper option, and any day with an uncertain end makes it the more comfortable one.
Your car, our chauffeur, by the hour
In most of the countries we serve a chauffeur can be engaged by the hour to drive your own vehicle - a car you keep in a second city, a hire car you would rather not drive after dinner. The conditions are the same as for the multi-day arrangement on the private chauffeur page: your insurance must cover a professional driver, and the chauffeur must hold the licence class the vehicle requires. Dispatch confirms both before the engagement.
An hourly day in practice
A partner from a Toronto law firm lands in London at 6:50 a.m. for a day of meetings and a 9 p.m. flight home. The reservation is one hourly engagement from 7:30 to 7:30 with an executive sedan: Heathrow to a client in the City, a second client in Canary Wharf, lunch in Mayfair, a meeting at counsel's chambers in the Temple, an hour at a hotel to change, and the car back to Terminal 5 in time for the check-in the airport recommends. Twelve hours, one chauffeur who has the day's addresses from the calendar, the bag in the boot from 7 a.m., and one line on the firm's corporate account with the hours and the distance itemised. Booked point to point the same day would have been six fares and six chauffeurs travelling empty to reach a passenger who might be early or late at every stop.
The same shape serves a family's day: a chauffeur with an executive SUV from 9 to 6 in Paris, the Louvre, lunch, the Eiffel Tower, a toy shop, the hotel, with the pushchair in the boot and a car outside every door.
What the hourly rate includes and excludes
Included: the chauffeur's time, the vehicle, fuel, tolls, parking at every stop, the standard gratuity, the distance allowance per hour, water and charging in the car, and dispatch support throughout the engagement. Excluded and shown separately at booking where they apply: distance beyond the allowance, hours beyond the reserved block, venue-specific vehicle permits such as a stadium's coach pass, a licensed guide where one is required, and the chauffeur's meals and accommodation on engagements that run overnight away from the base city. There are no fuel surcharges, no booking fees and no charges for changes to the day's route.
Hourly chauffeur service in the gateway cities
The hourly service is available in every country on the engine, with the minimum block and the distance allowance set per city and shown at booking. In the largest gateways - New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Toronto, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Zurich, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney - an hourly engagement can be booked for the same day; elsewhere a day's notice is wise. Local rules affect the day in a few places and dispatch will tell you: congestion and low-emission zones in London, Paris, Milan and Stockholm are included in the fare; some financial districts and royal precincts restrict where a car may wait; and in cities with strict professional-driver hours, such as those governed by the European Commission's road transport rules, a very long day is served by two chauffeurs. The Global Business Travel Association publishes ground-transport duty-of-care guidance that corporate clients often ask us to work to on hourly days, and we do.
Booking, changing and cancelling an hourly engagement
Book on the engine with the start address, start time, hours and class; the fixed hourly rate and the block total are shown before you confirm. Changes to the start time or the number of hours are free until the cancellation window for the city, which is on the confirmation and in the terms; inside the window the reserved block is charged because the chauffeur has been committed to you for it. On the day, extensions are agreed with dispatch, subject to the chauffeur's next assignment, and the receipt at the end of the engagement shows the reserved hours, any extension, any distance beyond the allowance and the total.
Book a chauffeur by the hour - fixed rate, every class
