Taxi booking platforms for operators: should you take their work?

Booking platforms and transfer marketplaces offer something every growing firm wants: jobs you didn't have to win yourself. The price is a share of each fare, less hold over the passenger, and terms someone else writes. This guide explains how platform work generally reaches an operator, the pros and cons, the licensing rules that apply, and what to check before you sign up. It doesn't name platforms or quote their fees, because those change, and they're for you to read in each agreement.

How do taxi booking platforms work for operators?

A platform takes a booking from a passenger and gets a local operator to carry it out, keeping a fee or a commission. The details differ, but the work reaches an operator in one of three broad ways:

Transfer marketplaces, which sell airport and long-distance transfers to travellers, generally follow the first or second model. Ask each platform which model it uses, because the answer decides who the passenger's contract is with, who carries the liability, and what you may do with the passenger's details.

What are the pros and cons of platform work?

Platform work brings volume without marketing spend, at the cost of margin and control:

The jobs that suit platform work best are the ones that would otherwise not happen. An airport run at 10am on a Tuesday, when two drivers are idle, earns your firm something and earns your driver something. The same job at 11pm on a Friday, while your own regulars wait, costs you more than it pays. Keeping drivers busy in quiet hours covers other ways to fill the gaps.

Who owns the customer when a job comes from a platform?

The platform does, in practice. The passenger chose the platform, not you, and their details reach you so your driver can do the job.

That matters for marketing. The ICO's guidance on the soft opt-in says you may be able to email or text your own customers about similar services if they bought from you, gave you their details and didn't opt out, and that it doesn't apply to new contacts. A passenger whose details came from a platform didn't give them to you as your customer. So don't put them on your marketing list without their consent, and read the platform's terms, which may forbid approaching its passengers at all.

What you can do is give every platform passenger the same driver, car and service you'd give your own. If one of them later finds your number or your website and books you directly, that booking can be yours, subject to anything the platform's terms say. How to compete with bigger taxi firms covers building your own name alongside.

What licensing rules apply to platform jobs?

The same rules as any private hire booking, plus the subcontracting rules. Outside London, section 80 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 defines operating as making provision, in the course of business, for the invitation or acceptance of bookings for a private hire vehicle. Section 46(1)(d) says nobody may operate a private hire vehicle in a controlled district without an operator licence under section 55. So a platform that takes private hire bookings is operating, and needs a licence.

Section 55A lets a licensed operator that has accepted a booking arrange for another licensed operator to carry it out. Whichever way a job reaches you, four rules apply:

1. The contract is with whoever accepted the booking. Section 56(1) says every contract for the hire of a licensed private hire vehicle is deemed to be made with the operator who accepted the booking, whether or not that operator provided the vehicle.
2. You record it. Section 56(2) requires you to record, before the journey starts, every booking you accept from a passenger or undertake at another operator's request, in the form your council sets.
3. Your licences must match. Outside London, the car and driver you send must be licensed by the same council as your operator licence. Our guide to cross-border hiring and subcontracting covers the details.
4. Safeguarding stays with the operator. The statutory standards say operators may outsource booking and dispatch but cannot pass on the obligation to protect children and vulnerable adults.

In London, section 5 of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 lets a London operator pass a booking to another London operator, to an operator licensed by a council outside London for a booking accepted in that district, or to an operator in Scotland.

Before you take any platform's work, ask which council licenses it, and ask that council to confirm the licence. If the platform can't tell you, don't take the work.

What should you check in a platform's terms?

Read the whole agreement before you accept a job, and keep a copy of the version you agreed to. The points that decide whether the work pays:

• Price and fee: who sets the fare, what the platform deducts and when.
• Payment: how often you're paid, and how long after the job.
• Cancellations and no-shows: what you're paid when a passenger cancels or doesn't appear, and what happens if your car is late.
• Ratings and penalties: how ratings are worked out, and what leads to fewer jobs or a suspension.
• How jobs are offered: whether you can turn jobs down without a penalty.
• Exclusivity and contact: whether you can work for other platforms, and what you may do with passengers' details.
• Ending the agreement: how much notice each side must give.

Two laws help here. On payment, GOV.UK says that if no payment date is agreed, a business payment is late 30 days after the invoice, and agreed terms between businesses should normally be no longer than 60 days unless that's fair to both.

On the terms themselves, the UK has kept an EU platform-to-business regulation, Regulation (EU) 2019/1150, for online services that let businesses in the UK offer goods or services to consumers in the UK. Where it applies, the terms must be in plain language, changes need at least 15 days' notice (and you can end the contract before they take effect), a suspension must come with a statement of reasons, ending the whole service needs 30 days' notice except in set cases, and the terms must set out the main things that decide ranking. Whether it covers a given platform depends on how that platform works, so ask.

How do you work out whether platform jobs pay?

Work out what each job pays per hour of driver time, including the drive to the pickup and back, and compare it with your own work at the same hour.

Example, with made-up figures that aren't any platform's prices. A platform airport job pays you £30 after the platform's deduction and takes 70 minutes, including the empty drive back: £30 ÷ 70 × 60 = £25.71 an hour. A local job from your own phones pays £12 and takes 20 minutes: £12 ÷ 20 × 60 = £36 an hour. At a busy hour, the local jobs win. At a quiet hour with no local jobs, the platform job beats an idle car.

Then add the costs that don't show on the job: the wait for payment, cancellations, the admin of a second stream of bookings, and any of your own regulars pushed into long waits. Tag platform jobs as their own source in your booking records, so you can see their share of your work each month. Where your taxi bookings come from shows how.

How do you stop platform work taking over?

Decide your limits before you start. A firm that depends on one platform for most of its work has handed that platform its prices and its future.

Give your controllers a simple rule: platform jobs fill gaps, and your own customers come first at peaks. Watch the platform share of your jobs every month, and if it keeps climbing, put more effort into direct work. Direct bookings take effort to win, but you keep the passenger, the price and the relationship.

Dispatch AI is booking and dispatch software for taxi and private hire firms. It answers your phone, WhatsApp, texts and emails, books the jobs at your prices and sends them to your drivers on your own app. For ways to win direct work, read getting your first taxi bookings and how to get corporate taxi clients.