A travel programme knows a great deal about the aircraft. It knows the carrier, the safety record, the cabin, the fare rules and the airline’s obligations if the flight is cancelled. It usually knows almost nothing about the person who drives the passenger to the hotel.
That asymmetry is now being noticed. Duty of care is reported to be the factor travel managers cite most often when choosing a ground supplier, and the ground leg is consistently described as the most frequent and least controlled touchpoint of a trip — a modest share of the spend, and a disproportionate share of the exposure. So it is worth setting out what Swiss law actually demands of the person behind the wheel, and what a booking channel does not.
Carrying a passenger for money is a licensed activity
In Switzerland, driving people for payment requires a licence for professional passenger transport. It is not the licence in most wallets. It is a separate qualification with its own examination, its own medical requirements and its own renewal cycle, and it applies to the driver, not to the platform that dispatched them.
Every Z-ALS chauffeur holds it before their first shift, and every one is a graduate of the Chauffeur Limousine Academy. That is a starting condition, not an achievement.
Private insurance does not cover paid carriage
This is the part that surprises people. A standard Swiss private motor policy does not cover a vehicle being used commercially. A driver carrying a fare-paying passenger on private cover is not underinsured — for that journey they are, in practice, uninsured, and so is the passenger sitting behind them.
Every fare we publish includes passenger insurance and 8.1% VAT. It is inside the number rather than an option beside it, because it is not optional.
An operator and a booking channel are not the same supplier
The distinction that matters in an incident is who employs the driver and whose insurance answers. A platform that matches a request to whichever car is nearest is a marketplace. Its contract is usually with you for the introduction, and with the driver for very little.
Zurich-Airport Limousinen Services GmbH has traded from Am Balsberg 36 in Kloten since 2004 and has been a GmbH since 2014. The cars are ours, the chauffeurs are ours, dispatch is a desk four minutes from the terminals, and there is no subcontracted city fleet underneath any of it. When something goes wrong at 03:40 there is one company to call and it answers.
What we do beyond the licence
- Our own training before the first shift: defensive driving, airport procedure, luggage and door protocol, and how to say nothing at all for ninety minutes.
- Background checks that are renewed rather than taken once at hiring.
- Medicals kept current.
- Winter tyres from October to April, servicing at one garage, and no vehicle branding — a car that does not announce who is in it.
- For multi-day work, one named chauffeur with a name and a number given before the first pickup.
Most of the team has driven for us for more than five years. That tenure is the real control. Procedure catches a bad first week; only retention catches a bad habit in year three.
Five questions worth putting in writing
- Does every driver hold a professional passenger transport licence — and will you evidence it?
- Whose insurance covers my passenger, and is it commercial cover?
- Do you employ the chauffeurs, or introduce them?
- Are background checks renewed, and how often?
- Who answers the phone at three in the morning?
None of these are difficult questions for an operator to answer, which is what makes the response time informative rather than the response. Ask them of whoever holds your ground transport account this quarter. How long does the fourth one take to come back?