How to price a limo trip

A limo rate is a base rate for one vehicle class and one service type, plus a short list of add-ons that are known in advance, plus rules for the things that go wrong. Most operators who lose money on a trip did not lose it on the base rate. They lost it on an unbilled extra stop, an hour of wait time at a late flight, or a no-show that nobody invoiced.

This guide walks through building a rate from scratch. The worked example is a sedan airport transfer with made-up but plausible numbers. Your market will be different; the method is the same.

Start with the vehicle class

Every rate hangs off a vehicle class, not a specific car. A class is what the customer buys (sedan, SUV, sprinter, stretch, 24-passenger minibus, motorcoach). The plate in the driveway is a dispatch decision made later.

Keep the list short. Four to six classes cover most black-car fleets. Every class you add is another row in every rate list, another thing to keep in step through the seasons, and another choice for a customer who only wanted a car to the airport.

For the example, the class is Sedan.

Set a base rate by service type

The base rate depends on the service type. The two that matter most are point-to-point and hourly charter, and they are priced on different logic.

Point-to-point is a flat price for a known origin and destination. The price absorbs the drive, the time, and the risk of traffic. Airport transfers are almost always point-to-point, and many operators publish a flat airport rate per class from each zone of their service area.

Hourly is a rate per hour with a minimum. The minimum protects you from a two-hour booking that burns a four-hour block of a driver's day. Three hours is a common sedan minimum; four or five for SUVs and larger vehicles. As-directed work is hourly by definition, because the route is not known when the car leaves the garage.

Example. Sedan point-to-point, downtown zone to the airport: $95. Sedan hourly: $75 per hour, three-hour minimum. Pick the one that fits the trip and write it down as the base. For the airport run the base is $95.

Add gratuity, tolls and parking

Gratuity is usually a percentage of the base, and most operators set it between 18 and 20 percent. State it clearly on the quote. A customer who sees "gratuity included" on the confirmation does not tip twice and does not argue at the invoice.

Tolls and parking are pass-throughs. Some operators bill them at cost, some add a small handling margin, and some fold a flat estimate into airport rates so the invoice does not change. Whatever you choose, be consistent, because the bookkeeper is the one who has to explain it.

Example. Gratuity at 20 percent of $95 is $19. Tolls on the airport route are $8 each way, so $8 for this leg. Airport short-term parking for a meet and greet runs about $6. Running total: $128.

Decide how wait time and extra stops are charged

Wait time is where airport pricing breaks. Give the customer a grace period after the flight lands (30 minutes for domestic, 45 to 60 for international is typical) and then charge in increments. Billing in 15-minute blocks at a quarter of the hourly rate is simple to explain and simple to calculate: $75 an hour becomes $18.75 per quarter hour.

An extra stop on a point-to-point trip is a flat fee if it is on the way and a short stop, and it becomes hourly if it is neither. Write the threshold down. "On route, under ten minutes, $15. Otherwise the trip converts to hourly at the minimum" is a rule a dispatcher can apply at 6 a.m. without calling you.

Example. The flight was 20 minutes late, inside the grace period, so wait time is $0. No extra stops. Running total is still $128.

Write the late-cancel and no-show rules

A late cancel is a cancellation inside your cutoff window. Twenty-four hours is the common default for sedans and SUVs; charter and group work usually needs 48 to 72 hours because the vehicle was held off the market longer. The fee is either a percentage of the base (50 or 100 percent) or a flat amount.

A no-show is the passenger not appearing after the driver waited the agreed period and tried to reach them. Most operators charge the full base plus gratuity, plus any tolls and parking already spent. Put the rule on every confirmation. The rule you did not publish is the rule you cannot enforce.

Example. Late cancel inside 24 hours: 100 percent of base, so $95. No-show: $95 base plus $19 gratuity plus any tolls and parking incurred.

Adjust for the season

Demand is not flat. Prom and wedding season, the holiday run from mid-November to New Year, and a major event week in your city all justify a seasonal rate. The cleanest way to do this is a percentage uplift across a class, or a different rate list for the season, rather than one-off edits per booking.

Decide the dates in advance and publish them to your office staff and your portal. A seasonal rate that appears only after the customer calls feels like a surcharge; one that was on the website in September feels like a price.

Example. December 15 to January 2, sedan rates up 15 percent. The $95 airport run becomes $109.25 in that window.

Sanity-check against dead-head and garage time

Before you publish a rate, run it against the trip nobody sees: the dead-head to the pickup and back from the drop, plus garage time for prep and clean-up. A $95 airport run with 25 minutes of positioning each way and 20 minutes of garage time is about two hours of a driver and a car for $95 plus gratuity. If the driver is paid $25 an hour and the sedan costs $0.70 a mile all-in, the margin on that leg is thin, and it is negative if the return is empty and there is no second run to stack behind it.

This is not an argument for a higher airport rate; the market sets that. It is an argument for knowing which rates only work when the schedule is tight, so the dispatcher stacks them and the office does not discount them further.

Finished example, sedan airport transfer, off season: base $95, gratuity $19, tolls $8, parking $6, wait time $0, extras $0, discount $0. Leg total $128. Late cancel $95. No-show $114 plus tolls and parking spent.

How liverybook handles it

In liverybook, the method above maps onto a few objects, so you build the rate once and the system applies it to every leg.

A rate list holds one rate per vehicle class. Each rate carries the base rate and its own late-cancel and no-show fee rules, as a percent of base or a flat amount. If a rate has no rule of its own, the tenant's default late-cancel window applies (24 hours unless you change it in settings).

A rate group bundles rate lists with a seasonal schedule by month, so the December uplift in the example lives in the schedule and not in a dispatcher's memory. The customer portal prices public bookings from the tenant's default rate group, so the seasonal price the office sees is the price the customer sees.

Every leg total is calculated the same way: base rate plus gratuity plus tolls plus parking plus wait time charge plus extras, minus discount. Each of those is a field on the leg, so the invoice line reads like the worked example above instead of a single opaque number. Additional fees you define (airport fee, meet and greet, child seat) are added as extras.

When a booking moves to late_cancelled or no_show, liverybook creates the invoice line for the fee automatically using the rate's rule, and the transition is written to the booking's event log. Nobody has to remember to bill it. Billing accounts carry the terms, and invoices are built from invoice lines as legs complete, either per trip or batched at the end of the period.

The billing module is described in more detail at /product/billing. Pricing for liverybook itself is per office seat with no per-trip fee, at /pricing.