When air travelers touch down at an unfamiliar airport, they have a few options for the next leg of their journey.
Rent a car. Take a taxi. Step onto a shuttle. Board a bus or a light-rail train.
While online travel agencies such as Hotwire, Orbitz or Travelocity make it easy for travelers to book a rental car when they make flight and hotel reservations, customers who prefer not to drive have largely been left to their own devices once they're on the ground.
"The ground transportation category has largely been ignored," said Charles Fraas, CEO for GroundLink, a global car service. "For years, it has really never met the consumer’s needs."
The industry is widely fragmented with numerous local suppliers, Fraas said. That's made it difficult for travelers to find broad, geographic coverage and reliable service, he added, and there's a wide discrepancy in pricing. “We’re really challenging the travel industry to think broader.”
GroundLink lets customers book a car via phone, online or through a mobile app and offers 12 classes of service, from sedans and sport-utility vehicles to stretch limos and party buses. Customers can see the price of their car before they book and view their driver's location.
GroundLink currently is available in 5,000 cities and 110 countries. “Many of these countries, you can actually book a car with us with one-hour notice,” said S. Daniel Leon, general manager of mobile for GroundLink.
Another option for travelers is Limos.com, an online marketplace for private car service. CEO T.J. Clark said his company's mission is to make it as easy to book a car service as it is to book a hotel or flight online.“Many places in New York, you can get a car with us in five minutes,” Leon said, adding that the company plans to expand to more U.S. cities in 2012.
“What is so surprising is that less than 5 percent of the bookings in this category are being done online,” Clark said.
Limos.com has aggregated 2,000 local suppliers from around the globe and entered them in a single, common interface that lets customers input, for example, the number of passengers and where they are going, and see instant results that include price comparisons, star ratings and customer reviews.
Limos.com will be live with five of the 10 largest airlines, two of the four largest hotel chains and three of the top six online travel agencies in early 2012, Clark said.
“Car service is a great service,” Clark said. “It’s reliable, safe and it can be affordable.”
Clem Bason, president of Hotwire Group, told msnbc.com that until about six months ago it was difficult to compare prices for ground transportation options. He thinks limos.com and GroundLink can help fill in that information gap. “It’s clearly meeting a need,” he said.Bob Lewis, director of ground transportation for Sabre Travel Network, the world's largest global distribution system, said corporate travel agents often are able to book private cars for their clients but he sees significant opportunity for growth in the leisure-travel market.
"I’m not sure that a cab is always the most comfortable choice,” Lewis said.
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