The travel desk: flights, hotels and the rest of the trip

Why a limousine site has a travel desk

Nobody books a chauffeur for its own sake. The car exists because there is a flight to meet, a hotel to reach, a conference to attend or a week in Whistler to start. For years the industry pretended otherwise and made the traveller arrange each piece with a different company; the travel desk on every page of this site is the alternative. It is a live search of BookingWorldwide.net, our travel partner, for flights, hotels, resorts, activities, packages and car rental. You search here, the results and the booking complete on BookingWorldwide.net, and the chauffeur that starts and ends the trip is booked on this page at a fixed fare.

The two bookings are separate transactions with two confirmations, and that is deliberate: the chauffeur fare is fixed and refundable on our terms, the flight or hotel is priced and refundable on the airline's or the hotel's, and neither should be hidden inside the other.

What the desk searches

Flights. Every airline into every Canadian gateway - Air Canada, WestJet, Porter, Flair and the international carriers - compared on one screen, with the return and the connection shown together. The chauffeur pickup for the arriving flight is booked here with the flight number, and the flight tracking does the rest.

Hotels. Downtown towers, airport hotels for the 6 am departure, the boutique places in Old Montreal and Yaletown, the conference hotels beside the convention centres in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. The hotel address goes straight into the chauffeur booking as the drop-off.

Resorts. Whistler and Blackcomb, Banff and Lake Louise, Muskoka, Mont-Tremblant, Blue Mountain, the Okanagan wineries - and the Caribbean, Mexico and further for the winter escape. The city-to-city service drives you from the airport to the resort at a fixed fare; the resort itself is booked on the desk.

Activities. Tours, tickets and experiences at the far end: the Niagara Falls boat, the Rockies gondola, the Montreal food tour, the Halifax harbour cruise. Booked on the desk, driven to by the chauffeur.

Packages. Flight and hotel priced together, which is usually cheaper than the two apart and simpler to change.

Car rental. For the days a chauffeur is not the answer - the week driving the Icefields Parkway, the family road trip to Prince Edward Island. Chauffeur to the rental counter, rental for the week, chauffeur back to the airport.

How the search hands off

The search form on this page and on every other page takes the destination, the dates and the party size. When you submit it, BookingWorldwide.net opens with that search already run - for a city it knows, at the destination page; for a vertical, at that vertical's search results. From there the booking is BookingWorldwide.net's: its account, its payment, its confirmation and its customer service for the flight or the hotel. Come back to this page - or stay on the booking engine you already have open - for the chauffeur.

The itineraries this was built for

The airport-to-resort week. Land at Calgary, Luxury SUV to Banff at a fixed fare with a stop in Canmore for groceries, five nights at the Fairmont booked on the desk, SUV back to the airport on the Saturday. One sitting to arrange, two confirmations, no rental car in a mountain snowstorm.

The conference. Flight into Montreal on the desk, three nights at the Palais des congrès hotel on the desk, chauffeur from Trudeau on the Monday and back on the Thursday on this page, and an hourly chauffeur for the client dinner on the Wednesday.

The wedding weekend. Flights for the family from three cities on the desk, the hotel block on the desk, the wedding limousine and the airport transfers for the grandparents on this page. The Niagara Falls page and the Kelowna page are written for exactly this.

The cross-border shopping day. A chauffeur to Buffalo from Toronto, the outlet mall, the Bills game, and the hotel on the desk if it turns into a weekend.

Who BookingWorldwide.net is

BookingWorldwide.net is a travel-booking platform in the same family of businesses as this site, sharing the LimousineWorldwide.Directory and HotelsWorldwide.Directory network. It runs on an established white-label booking engine with live airline and hotel inventory, its own payment processing and its own support desk, and it lists ninety-nine destinations with dedicated pages. We recommend it because we use it; we do not earn a commission on your hotel that changes the chauffeur fare, and the chauffeur fare is the same whether you use the desk or not.

What the desk is not

It is not a travel agency in the sense of a human building a custom itinerary - the contact page is for that, and for corporate accounts we will happily coordinate with your travel management company. It does not book cruises; for the cruise ports it is the chauffeur that matters, and the Vancouver, Halifax and Quebec City pages cover the terminal pickups. And it does not replace the reservation engine for the chauffeur: that is booked here, at a fixed fare, with the four promises attached.

How to use the desk well

Search the flight first, because the flight sets everything else: the arrival time sets the chauffeur pickup, the airport sets the city page to read, and the fare difference between a Tuesday and a Friday is often larger than the hotel's. Book the hotel second, and copy its address into the chauffeur booking as the drop-off - the engine prices the exact address, so 'the Fairmont' is not enough but '900 W Georgia St' is. Book the chauffeur last, with the flight number, and add the return leg in the same reservation. Then, if there is a tour or a ticket, the activities tab.

For a multi-city trip - Toronto, then Calgary, then Vancouver - run the desk once per leg and book the chauffeur once per city; a corporate account keeps all three chauffeur bookings on one invoice.

Destinations the desk knows by name

The engine behind the desk carries ninety-nine destinations with their own pages, and the Canadian ones are the ones our chauffeurs drive to: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Quebec City, Halifax, Victoria, Whistler, Banff, Niagara Falls. Type any of them into the search and the desk opens that destination's page with hotels and activities already filtered. Beyond Canada the list runs through the United States, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia - the far end of a trip that begins with a cross-border chauffeur or an airport transfer to the international terminal.

The seasons, and what to book when

Canada's travel year has hard edges. Ski season in Whistler and Banff runs December to April and the resort hotels sell out for the Christmas fortnight and the February school break months ahead; the chauffeur from Vancouver or Calgary can be booked the same day, but the hotel cannot. Summer in Muskoka, the Okanagan and the Maritimes is July and August, with Labour Day the last full weekend. Niagara's wine harvest is September and October, the Niagara Falls page covers the day trip. Conference season is January to March and September to November in the big cities, when downtown hotels are dearest and airport hotels are the value. The desk shows the prices; the city pages explain the traffic.

Hotels near the airports

For the 6 am departure or the midnight arrival, the airport hotel is often the right answer, and every gateway has a cluster: the hotel strip along Dixon Road at Pearson, the Fairmont inside the terminal at YVR, the hotels on the airport road at Edmonton and Calgary, the Marriott at Trudeau. The desk finds them by searching the airport code; the chauffeur booking for the next morning is a short fixed fare, and a chauffeur to an airport hotel at midnight is a great deal more pleasant than a shuttle.

Resorts the chauffeur drives to

Some resort transfers are the best trips we do. Vancouver to Whistler along the Sea-to-Sky is two hours of coastline and mountains; Calgary to Banff is ninety minutes with the Rockies rising the whole way; Toronto to Muskoka is two and a half hours north on the 400; Montreal to Mont-Tremblant is under two hours on the 15. Each is a city-to-city fixed fare with the return built in, in an SUV that takes the skis, and each ends at a resort the desk can book. The British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec pages give the seasonal road notes.

Activities worth the chauffeur

Some experiences are better arrived at than driven to. The Niagara Falls boat and the winery lunch afterwards; the Banff gondola and the Lake Louise afternoon; the Quebec City walking tour that starts at the Château and ends in the Lower Town; the Halifax harbour cruise with the Citadel gun at noon. Booked on the desk, driven to by the chauffeur, and nobody has to find parking or stay sober for the drive back.

One more thing the desk does

It gives the travel manager or the family organiser one place to look. The chauffeur confirmation is in one inbox, the flight and hotel in another, and the itinerary is the two together. For a company that has never had a travel management company, the desk and a corporate account are, between them, most of what one would do.

Payment, currency and confirmations

The chauffeur is paid in Canadian dollars on this site, by card at booking or by account for corporate clients, and the receipt is in Canadian dollars with the tax shown. The desk's bookings are paid on BookingWorldwide.net in the currency it displays, which for Canadian destinations is Canadian dollars and for the far end of an international trip may be the local currency or US dollars, with the exchange shown before you confirm. Each booking produces its own confirmation - the chauffeur's from us, the flight's or the hotel's from the desk - and neither confirmation depends on the other, which means a cancelled flight does not cancel the car until you tell us, and a changed hotel does not change the drop-off until you tell us. Keep both confirmations in the same folder and tell the desk when one changes; the contact page has the address, and the FAQ covers the cancellation windows on our side.

When to call a person instead

The desk and the engine cover the ordinary trip. For the extraordinary one - a delegation of sixty across three cities, a film crew moving equipment, a wedding with guests arriving from four countries over three days - call the desk. A person will build the chauffeur side by hand, coordinate it with whatever travel company the group uses, and hand it to dispatch as one plan rather than sixty bookings.

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