December is the one month of the year when the whole country wants a car on the same four or five evenings. Office parties, client dinners, family gatherings and everything else compress into a few weeks, and the Fridays and Saturdays in the middle of the month are the busiest nights in the diary by a considerable margin.
That makes December a planning problem rather than a booking problem. This guide covers when to arrange things, how to plan a return that nobody can predict, the particular difficulty of taking eight people to eight addresses at midnight, and what a cold city centre does to an evening that was designed in October.
The diary fills from the outside in
Availability in December does not decline gradually. The middle Fridays and Saturdays go first, then the weekday evenings around them, and by the time the month begins the busiest nights have very little left in them. Anyone arranging a party for a specific date is competing with everybody else who chose the same date for the same reasons.
So the practical advice is unglamorous: decide the date, then arrange the cars, rather than the other way round. An enquiry in October for a December Saturday is a straightforward conversation. The same enquiry in the first week of December is a different one, and often about what can be held rather than what would be ideal.
Returns nobody can predict
A Christmas party has a start time and no finish time. The bar closes at some point, a group moves on somewhere else, and the last hour expands quietly. Booking a return for a specific time in December is the commonest way an evening goes wrong, because the time chosen at the point of booking bears no relation to what actually happens.
Hold the vehicle instead, with a window rather than a moment, and nominate one person to say when the group is ready. That person should be somebody who intends to remain capable of making a decision, which is worth agreeing at the start of the evening rather than assuming. The chauffeur waits somewhere sensible until they hear.
Eight people, eight addresses
Taking a group home at the end of a December night is a routing problem, and it runs longer than anybody estimates. Eight people scattered across a city is not one journey; it is seven journeys with the same vehicle, and the person dropped last may be in the car an hour after the first has gone to bed.
Work out the order in advance and tell everybody what it is. If somebody lives a long way out, they should know they are last, or they should be in a different car. Two vehicles doing four stops each finish considerably sooner than one doing eight, which is worth knowing before the evening rather than during it.
- Every address in full, gathered before the evening starts
- A drop-off order decided in advance and shared
- Whoever lives furthest out, identified early
- One person nominated to speak for the group
- Agreement on whether the car returns for a second run
- A plan for anyone who decides to stay on
Office parties and who is responsible
Where a company is arranging transport for its people, the booking is usually held by somebody in the office rather than by the passengers. That works well provided the chauffeurs know whose instructions to take and the passengers know what has been arranged for them. Both of those need saying out loud in advance rather than assumed.
It is also worth deciding what happens if somebody wants to go somewhere that was not part of the plan. Chauffeurs work to the booking as agreed with the person who made it, and changes come from that person. Establishing this beforehand avoids a discussion at half past midnight between a driver and somebody who has had a good evening.
Cold, wet and dressed for indoors
December evenings are planned for the room and endured outside it. Thin fabrics, no coat because the cloakroom queue looked long, and a walk from a restricted street in the rain. It is a small thing, and it is the difference between the last part of an evening being pleasant and being remembered for the wrong reason.
Set-down and collection in city centres are constrained in December by markets, pedestrianisation and sheer volume, so the walk may be longer than at other times of year. Ask your chauffeur to have the cabin warm, keep coats in the car rather than a cloakroom, and expect the collection point to be a corner rather than a door.
- Coats left in the car rather than in a cloakroom queue
- A warm cabin arranged for the return
- Shoes that will survive a wet pavement
- A collection point agreed before you go in
- Umbrellas kept in the vehicle rather than carried
Christmas travel and New Year's Eve
The season has a second half that gets far less planning than the first. Travel to family over Christmas, airport runs on some of the year's most congested days, and elderly relatives who should not be driving in December weather. These are quieter journeys, and they are worth arranging alongside the parties rather than afterwards.
New Year's Eve is its own case. Road closures in city centres are extensive and published close to the date, the roads are unusually busy at unusual hours, and demand is at its peak for the whole year. Anything on that night wants arranging early and planning loosely, with a collection point agreed once the closures are announced.
