One-Way or Return: Choosing How to Book Your Journey

Three arrangements, not two

People tend to think in terms of one-way or return, but there are really three shapes. The first is a single transfer with no return. The second is two separate transfers, out and back, with hours in between when the vehicle goes elsewhere. The third is a car that stays with you throughout, which is hourly hire rather than a return.

Choosing the wrong shape is the most common source of confusion in chauffeur bookings, because all three can be described in conversation as booking a car there and back.

How the planner handles a return

On Point to Point, Airport Transfer and Private Aviation journeys, the second step offers an optional return date and time alongside the outbound one. Filling it in tells us the second leg exists and when it is expected, which allows the whole thing to be planned as one piece of work.

Choose By the Hour and that field is replaced by a duration selector, because an hourly booking has no return leg to declare: the vehicle is with you for the block of time you have booked, wherever the day takes you.

When a return booking is the better choice

If the gap between legs is long and the destination is somewhere the vehicle can usefully leave, two scheduled transfers are usually the sensible structure. A morning drop at Heathrow and an evening collection four days later is plainly two journeys, however it is described.

Booking both at once still has advantages over booking them separately at different times. The pair can be planned together, the details only need explaining once, and the arrangement sits in a single thread where any change to one leg is visible against the other.

• Long gaps where the vehicle can be released
• Return timings that are already known
• Airport trips with a fixed outbound and inbound
• Multi-day trips where the two legs are unrelated

When you actually want the car to wait

If the gap is short, or the finish time is uncertain, releasing the vehicle and bringing it back can be the worse option. A dinner that may run late, a hospital appointment of unknown length, or a meeting with no fixed end all favour a vehicle that stays.

That arrangement is hourly hire. The chauffeur remains available, you are not watching the clock in order to make a fixed pick-up, and there is no risk of standing outside a venue waiting for a car that is twenty minutes away. How waiting is treated in your quotation is confirmed when the journey is priced.

Rural, late and awkward return legs

Return legs are not all equal. A collection from a village at eleven at night, or from a house an hour beyond the nearest town, involves a vehicle travelling out with nothing else nearby to do. That is genuine work and it is reflected in how such journeys are quoted.

If you have flexibility on the return, say so. Sometimes a modest change in timing, or a collection from a slightly different point, materially improves what can be arranged. If you have no flexibility at all, say that too, because knowing which parts are fixed is what makes a schedule reliable.

Plan your chauffeur journey

London Chauffeurs provides itinerary-led private travel for airport transfers, executive travel, private aviation, events and long-distance UK journeys. Availability and pricing are confirmed for the requested itinerary.

Frequently asked questions