Taxi Driver Online

What constitutes "Hire or Reward" in the use of providing free Transport by a hotelier to encourage punters to use their establishments?

Is it deemed that the Reward element comes off the back of the extra food or drink sales brought about through free Transport...and lets be honest their is nowt for free really in such transport, it's not as if you could book the free Hotel transport just to go see your aunty Mavis who just happened to live near by the Hotel that offers the Transport, no, they would be expecting you to spend your hard earned purely within their establishment.

Should such transport be Licenced or not? and If the Vehicles has over 8 passenger seats should it not have to be a PSV licenced vehicle?

Rout v Swallow Hotels


viewtopic.php?t=3638

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

24 hour contract exemption, if it's Scotland.
Time it was abolished if you ask me.

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It surely cant come under the 24 hour Exemption if it involves several different punters on several different journeys on any given day.....the 24 hour exemption just allows for one contract of no more 24 hour duration with any one client.

Provided the client is the hotel in question (or even a chain of hotels), its a single contract


The single contract must be exclusive, which means the vehicle in question must not do any other contract within any 24 hour period.

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Similar discussed in this thread ;

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=19943

Does the proposed new Scottish Act not have an option to kill off this scam?

Or are they just interested in limiting PH?

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IDFIMH

But the Client is not the Hotel as the Hotel in this case is the transport Provider, it's the hotels own vehicle, the client(s) are the potential multiple Patrons that the hotel hope to entice to spend money at the hotel/pub by means of a free lift.

I don't suppose they know themselves what they want....

Hey, don't shoot the messenger.

Ownership of the vehicle is irrelevant.
It is free transport provided by a hotel/pub/restaurant or whatever for implied or hoped for reward. It's an exemption from licensing and if the terms are not strictly adhered to an offence is committed.
The contract is not with the patrons but with the establishment, whether they own the vehicle or engage the services of someone else.

Similar to the 7 day exemption which was abolished in England and Wales about 4 years ago. And high time it was binned here as well.

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It may have been abolished but people are still operating without a license doing exactly the same as this hotel. There are still loads of airport cars running around without any form of license.

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Grandad,

Down here our old 7-day exemption was for the vehicle only.

So if the hotel are taking the bookings i.e. making provision, then they should have an operator's license.

But where the scammers fell down, down here, was they got lazy and didn't comply even with the little things that had to do to remain so-called legal.

Case law in E&W got to the point it was one contract in one period (us 7 days, you 24 hours).

So what should be happening at this hotel is that a new contract must be drawn up, signed and agreed, every 24 hours. Not one that carries on and on, one contract every day.

Chances of that happening are nil.

And of course if anyone has the hump with said hotel, Trip Advisor is a wonderful thing.

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IDFIMH

But how can a Hotel have a 24 hour contract with itself.....If the Hotel owns the vehicle and the potential customers are scattered over a 10 mile radius, if they pick up 10 different clients from 10 different places in 24 hours then in my book that would be 10 individual contracts in one day.

It may have been a 24 hour contract had the hotel decided to use another companies vehicle and driver under a single 24 hours contract who has priced the job as one regardless of the number of people it picks up...

If the Hotel picks up 10 different people from several different places using it's own vehicle then it cannot really be anything else other than 10 individual contracts...free or otherwise.

Im not say they cant do that, im only suggesting that if they did then theu should really be licensed to do so as it would breach the 24 hour exemption rule which permits only one contract with one client within a 24 hour period..

Even if they used a third party to carry out the runs, they might get away with being unlicensed as a Taxi, Hack or Minibus but they would still need the appropriate insurance at the very least to run clients about.

At the end of the day though I smell desperation from rural hoteliers that are resorting to such means in attempt to flag up dropping customer numbers.......in the past when this kind of thing has happened its usually fizzled out within months because it cost more to run than it ever made in profit.

Locally we have a food manufacturing factory that runs a small fleet of 17 seater LWB transit minibuses providing staff with transport to/from work, whats the difference between the factory and a hotel providing a courtesy vehicle?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

17 seaters are outwith the scope of taxi or PH licensing.

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