# Airport Transfere



## knodel (Jan 9, 2013)

I am planning to move to Spain very soon and I would like to start a luxury airport transfere service. Can anyone tell me what is required to start up this service. The service will be with a luxury 6 seater bus. Also I would like to build out the service for privat trips to England and Germany would this be possible. I would like to start the service in the Costa Blanca area. Many thanks in advance for any help.


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## jojo (Sep 20, 2007)

The first thing you need to do is to check out the competition, see what you can offer that they dont, formulate a business plan, set aside your funds and then go and see an abogado in Spain who will take it from there. As with most things in Spain, it wont be straight forward or easy. Bare in mind that the competition wont stand by and let you take any of their customers and probably wont play fair. Luxury travel is probably a dying need in the present crisis, but you need to do some serious research

Jo xxx


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## carlnotts (Sep 13, 2012)

knodel said:


> I am planning to move to Spain very soon and I would like to start a luxury airport transfere service. Can anyone tell me what is required to start up this service. The service will be with a luxury 6 seater bus. Also I would like to build out the service for privat trips to England and Germany would this be possible. I would like to start the service in the Costa Blanca area. Many thanks in advance for any help.


Would people travelling to the Costa Blanca really want a luxury transfer? I would of thought as people are travelling from A to B mostly on the AP7 they just want to do it the most cost affective & quickest way, the none stop bus to Benidorm which takes 45 minutes is only 16€ return then you have the resort hoppers which take longer at something like 5€ each way.

We did a private transfer once as the none stop bus had stopped running by the time we landed, it cost £50 GBP one way, it was ok but just a means to an end really, as jojo says you really do need to do your market research first, good luck with your venture.

Sent from my iPad using ExpatForum


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## xicoalc (Apr 20, 2010)

Sad to say but I'm of the same inclination as Jo and Carl. My field of expertise as always been in assisting people start businesses but I really think you need to do a lot of research on this one. First of all you would need to get licensing and permissions to do this legitimately. This would probably fall under the remit of some kind of taxi licence and traditional taxis in Spain are very much limited by licenses and handed down from father to son. They are very protective over their profession and it's not like the UK where if you want to operate some kind of transport business you can just pay a fee and apply for a licence – each region has a limited number of licences that the issue. I can't be 100% sure if this would come under a private hire type license or some other kind of category but either way I can assure you that you will be in for a very tough ride and a lot of red tape that you have to get through in order to make it legal. Don't even think about doing this illegally because many of the people that do airport runs or operate outside of the law not only end up in trouble with the authorities to take this kind of thing very seriously but also end up with trouble from the legitimate taxi drivers and there's been a lot of stories about groups of taxi drivers taking the law into their own hands – which to be fair you can understand because they're paying their taxes etc and struggling to get by.

Assuming that you get the necessary representation such as a business consultant and lawyers and find that you can obtain the licences then you need to do very careful cost analysis. Your self-employment fees for Social Security as well as your VAT and income tax are going to be extremely crippling in Spain and this is in addition to the cost of running and maintaining your cars. I cannot see there being much of a call for a luxury transport service - maybe from Heathrow but from Alicante? As Carl said there are so many ways to get from airport to resort and the taxis themselves are clean, smart and much better than most countries.

I can't see the average clientel of Alicante airport wanting a service like this. Who are you going to be trying to target client wise?


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## wiggytheone (Dec 3, 2012)

Have to agree with every one on this, good advice. Unless you have seen some niche that everyone else has missed then good luck, but I think it may be a little late in the day, for this type of venture


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## xicoalc (Apr 20, 2010)

wiggytheone said:


> Have to agree with every one on this, good advice. Unless you have seen some niche that everyone else has missed then good luck, but I think it may be a little late in the day, for this type of venture


sadly i think that most executives on the costa blanca are likely to be using the bus or a moped... as for luxury resorts i can guarantee they have deals where they need them with spanish companies - sorry to be bearer of bad news!


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## knodel (Jan 9, 2013)

Many thanks for all of your replies. It looks as though it is going to be more difficult than I thought. I thought there was a market for a service like this because of all the ADs for this type of service in the English papers in the area which I saw while I was in Spain a couple of months ago. Thought I could combine this service with my years of experience in passenger transport.


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## xabiaxica (Jun 23, 2009)

knodel said:


> Many thanks for all of your replies. It looks as though it is going to be more difficult than I thought. I thought there was a market for a service like this because of all the ADs for this type of service in the English papers in the area which I saw while I was in Spain a couple of months ago. Thought I could combine this service with my years of experience in passenger transport.


there's a 'minibus' service which runs in my area to Alicante airport - not luxury, just faster & more convenient than the ALSA bus

it costs 25€ pp to my town ........... sometimes you can be the only passenger on board - I have no idea how they keep it going but those of us who use it promote it at every opportunity because we don't want to lose it!!

now if a reasonably priced service can't fill the seats, what chance a 'luxury' & presumably expensive service?


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## xicoalc (Apr 20, 2010)

knodel said:


> Many thanks for all of your replies. It looks as though it is going to be more difficult than I thought.* I thought there was a market for a service like this because of all the ADs for this type of service in the English papers in the area which I saw while I was in Spain a couple of months ago.* Thought I could combine this service with my years of experience in passenger transport.


 I think the line that I have highlighted above pretty much concludes it for you my friend. If there are so many people advertising this kind of service then there is competition. Having worked with clients in the transport field as well as car hire and other similar sectors one thing that I know for sure is that the companies that do well do very well. If a client is a regular traveller and uses a luxury travel service then they will continue to use that service throughout. If you look for example in the press in the UK close to any airport do you see the classified section inundated with luxury travel companies? I'm guessing not despite there being lots of them. This is because these type of companies usually if successful do not advertise because they fill a specific niche.

I really feel that you should go back to the drawing board I know that you have had no positive feedback about this idea but I am 95% certain that unless you are very lucky, or have a lot of contacts if you go ahead with a plan like this you will be running back to England feeling very sorry for yourself and significantly out of pocket in 12 months time


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## Calas felices (Nov 29, 2007)

This company already does this and I'm sure will be happy to tell you how difficult it is to scrape a living.
wwwclydegrovegolfcom/index.html


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

and elsewhere you will probably find that some local does it door to door on the QT. As far as the expat market is concerned, pop into any Brit/German/Dutch shop and you will probably find several 'business' cards offering airport runs.


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