There is a particular kind of relief in getting into a car and recognising the person at the wheel. You do not have to explain the route you prefer, or that the meeting always overruns, or that you would rather not talk before nine. The second journey with the same chauffeur is quietly better than the first, and the fourth is better again.
Asking for someone by name is entirely normal and no chauffeur takes it as pressure. What we will not do is pretend the answer is always yes, because chauffeurs have their own diaries, their own days off and their own geography. Here is how to make the request, what makes it more likely to succeed, and what happens when it cannot be met.
How to make the request
Put it in your first message rather than raising it once the booking is nearly confirmed, because allocation is one of the earliest things we settle. Their name is ideal. If you did not catch it, the date, the route and the vehicle are usually enough for us to work out who it was, and a description of the car often narrows it faster than a description of the person.
It also helps to say how firm the request is. If you would take that chauffeur or nothing, we need to know, because it changes what we do with your dates. If you would simply prefer them, we will try and then confirm someone else without leaving you waiting. Both are reasonable positions; only one of them is obvious from a message that says you liked the last driver.
What makes it more likely
Some requests are easy to meet and some are genuinely difficult, and the difference is rarely about how much anybody wants to help. A weekday morning transfer in the same city as last time is a straightforward ask. The Saturday of a bank holiday weekend, four hundred miles from where that chauffeur usually works, is not, however early you enquire.
The factors below are the ones that actually move the odds. None of them is a rule, and we will always look regardless of how the list reads for your particular booking, but they explain why two apparently similar requests get different answers. If your dates have any flexibility at all, mention it, because a chauffeur who is unavailable on the Thursday is quite often free on the Friday.
- How far ahead you are asking, which matters more than anything else
- Whether the journey is in the region that chauffeur normally covers
- Whether your dates carry any flexibility at all
- The length of the booking, since a week is harder to hold than a morning
- Whether the vehicle class you want is one they usually drive
- Peak dates, weekends and event season, which fill first
What carries over when it is somebody else
If the request cannot be met, the useful thing to understand is that most of what you valued does not live in one person. Preferences noted on your booking travel with it: the entrance you use, the temperature you like, whether you want conversation, where the bags go, which side of a hotel forecourt actually works. A new chauffeur arrives already knowing those things.
Tell us anything worth adding to that record, particularly small things you would not think to mention twice. It is also worth saying if a chauffeur did not suit you; that is handled quietly and without drama, and it is far more useful to us than silence followed by a booking that never comes back. Either preference is noted and acted on.
