Meet & greet
Met in the arrivals hall, not phoned from a car park
Two people who have never met have to find each other in a building designed to move thousands of strangers past one another. Meet and greet is the answer to that problem, and the difference between operators is mostly what they mean by the phrase.
All 19 airports on this site, plus any address in Germany.
01
It is not an extra
On this site meet and greet is a switch on the booking form, and switching it on does not change the fare. The only thing it changes is that the form asks a second question — what name to print on the board — because that is a decision only you can make.
This is worth stating plainly for two reasons. The first is that a booking form is exactly where a service like this usually turns into a priced add-on, so a reader has every reason to assume it is one here until told otherwise. The second is that the phrase itself is elastic: "meet and greet" is also used for a driver who parks, telephones you, and describes where he is standing. That is a pickup. It is not the same product, and if you have ever tried to follow a phoned description of a kerb while carrying two cases and a child, you already know the difference.
- A named driver inside the building, before you come out
- The board carries whatever name you choose to give us
- Nothing on the invoice — the fixed price is the price
02
Why the driver waits inside
An arrivals hall is the one place in an airport where being found is the default rather than the exception. It has a single exit from customs, everybody who lands walks through it, and it is the only room in the building where standing still and holding a sign is normal behaviour rather than an obstruction. Every other meeting point is a compromise with the traffic layout.
The kerb is the other reason, and it is a harder fact than most sites will admit. A German airport forecourt gives a private car a short free stop and then starts charging, the allowance differs at every airport, and at some of them the exemption explicitly does not cover commercial passenger transport — a booked vehicle pays to stand from the moment it arrives. A driver who is paying by the minute is a driver who wants you to hurry, and the cost of that pressure lands on the passenger who has just spent nine hours in a seat.
That cost sits inside your fixed price rather than appearing on top of it. The table is here because the numbers are genuinely different from airport to airport, and because knowing them is what makes the choice between the hall and the kerb an informed one rather than a default.
03
When the airline changes the plan
A meeting point is an agreement about a place and a time, and an airline can break either half of it. Four ways, in rough order of how often they happen, and each has a different answer.
Landing early is the easy one — the driver is already assigned and the pickup simply moves forward. Landing late is the one people worry about and the one that matters least, because the waiting allowance starts at the actual landing time rather than the scheduled one; a slow belt and a long passport queue are inside it by design.
A terminal change is the one nobody expects. At the airports here with more than one arrivals building, the meeting point is written into the driver's job before the day, so an aircraft parked at a different terminal moves the driver rather than leaving the two of you each standing correctly in the wrong hall. At one airport in this network the arrivals hall you emerge into is decided by where the aircraft parks rather than by which airline you flew — which is exactly why the meeting point belongs in the job sheet and not in a passenger's memory of what the booking said.
A diversion is the genuine edge case: the aircraft lands in another city and the meeting point is now a hundred kilometres from where anyone agreed it would be. Tell us and the journey is re-quoted from where you actually are. What does not happen is a driver standing in the original hall all afternoon and the waiting appearing on your bill.
04
What the board says
The board is printed with the name you type into the booking, and that is worth half a thought before you type your own. An arrivals hall is a public room, a held sign is legible from a long way off, and a surname on it is a small piece of information about who has just landed and is about to get into a car.
So the field takes any name. A visiting client collected under the host company's name, a family collected under one surname rather than four, a booking made by an assistant that prints the passenger's name and not the account holder's — all of them work, and all of them are more common than people expect. The driver knows which board belongs to which job; the hall does not need to.
If the hall defeats you anyway, the driver's mobile number is in your confirmation and reaches the person actually holding the sign rather than an office. That is the fallback, and it is the point at which meet and greet stops being a service and starts being two people on the phone in the same building — which is why the sign exists.
Free stop at the kerb
What the kerb costs, airport by airport
The free standing allowance on the forecourt, where the airport publishes one. It is why the driver waits inside: a booked vehicle at the kerb is on the clock from the moment it stops.
| Airport | Free at the kerb |
|---|---|
| Dortmund Airport | 30 min On the departures level, level 1 — not outside arrivals. Free for the full half hour, which is the most generous stop of any airport we serve. |
| Berlin Brandenburg Airport | 10 min After that the first hour is €17 booked ahead, €23 at the barrier. Car parks P3, P7 and P8 are cheaper for anything longer than a wave. |
| Bremen Airport | 10 min Number-plate recognition on the way in, then €3 for each further ten minutes started. Replaced a regime of parking tickets, which is why older guides still warn you off stopping here. |
| Cologne Bonn Airport | 10 min, 1× per day Then €8 for a quarter of an hour. P20 serves Terminal 1 and P32 sits beside Terminal 2 arrivals, both at about €5 per half hour. |
| Frankfurt Airport | 10 min, twice a day |
| Frankfurt-Hahn Airport | 10 min Ten minutes on the terminal loop, for private cars. The exemption does not extend to commercial passenger transport, so a booked car pays to stand — which is in your fare, not on top of it. |
| Hamburg Airport | 10 min The zone is outside departures on Level 1, not on the arrivals level. Car parks P2 and P4 are the nearest, from about €4 per half hour. |
| Leipzig/Halle Airport | 10 min, 1× per day Lane 3 of the terminal forecourt specifically — the outer lanes are through traffic and you will be moved on. |
| Munich Airport | 10 min, twice a day Re-entering within the same stop is charged as a new one. Short-term parking runs €5 for a quarter hour, €10 for half, €20 for a full hour. |
| Münster Osnabrück Airport | 10 min The loading and unloading strip on the terminal forecourt, ten minutes free. Long enough here that it is genuinely not worth parking. |
| Nuremberg Airport | 8 min Number-plate recognition at the entry, so there is no ticket to take and nothing to validate. P5 is the short-stay area beyond it. |
| Stuttgart Airport | 8 min Short-stop zones sit on both the departures and the arrivals level, which is unusual — most German airports keep you off the arrivals kerb. |
| Düsseldorf Airport | 7 min Then €5 per further 5 minutes, 30 minutes maximum. Stopping on the arrivals level itself is not permitted. |
| Hannover Airport | 3 min The shortest free stop of any airport we serve. Terminals A and C both have a bar landside, which is the honest answer to "where do I wait". |
| Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport | — There is no free stopping period here at all — the only airport we serve where meeting someone at the kerb costs money from the first minute. |
Airports with no published allowance are not listed. Where a figure is missing here it has not been verified, which is a different thing from it being zero.
What is included
The same on every route, in every class, at every hour.
Fixed price
Agreed in full before you book. Traffic, tolls and airport charges are already in it — the meter does not exist.
Flight tracking
We watch the flight number you give us. Land early or three hours late and the pickup moves with you, at no extra cost.
Meet and greet
Your driver waits inside arrivals holding a name sign, helps with the luggage and walks you to the car.
60 minutes waiting
Free waiting time after touchdown — enough for passport control and baggage reclaim without anyone watching a clock.
Door to door
From the exact address to the exact address. Not to the nearest station, and not to a rank at the end of the road.
Child seats
Infant, child and booster seats specified at booking. They are not charged as an extra.
Free cancellation
Cancel up to 24 hours before pickup at no charge. Plans change; that is not something to be fined for.
Professional drivers
Licensed, insured, English- and German-speaking, and briefed on your journey before they set off.
Fixed price
When the kerb is better
If you are travelling with hand luggage only, you know the airport, and the whole object is to be moving within four minutes of clearing customs, ask for the kerb instead. Say so in the booking and the driver meets you outside. Meet and greet costs you a short walk to a fixed point in exchange for never having to look for anything, and that is a trade some travellers should decline — a frequent flyer who could walk their home airport blindfolded is one of them.
It is also an airport service and not a universal one. A pickup at a hotel, an office or a private address has nothing to meet you in: the driver is at the door at the agreed time, which is the whole of it. The switch is on the form for airport journeys because that is where the problem it solves exists.
FAQ
Common questions
- Does meet and greet cost extra?
- No. It is included in the fixed price on every airport booking, and turning it on changes nothing except that the form asks what name to print on the board.
- Where exactly will the driver be standing?
- In the arrivals hall of the terminal named on your booking, past customs, where the sign is visible from the doors. At the airports with more than one arrivals hall the specific one is written into the driver's job before the day rather than left to the two of you to work out on arrival.
- What if I cannot find the driver?
- Your confirmation carries the driver's mobile number, which reaches the person holding the sign rather than an office switchboard. The support line is on the same message if the phone does not answer.
- Can the board show a company name instead of mine?
- Yes, and it often should. The field takes whatever you type — a company, a host's name, a group name. A held sign is readable across a large room, and a surname on it tells that room something about who has just landed.
- Is it available on an hourly booking or a city pickup?
- It is an airport service, because an arrivals hall is the problem it solves. A pickup at a hotel, an office or an address is simply the driver at the door at the agreed time.
Services
The rest of the service
Chauffeur service
A chauffeur for the hour, or for the journey
Most transfer sites sell you a line between two addresses. A chauffeur service sells you the driver — and the difference shows up on the days when you do not know yet where you are going next.
Limousine service
A limousine service that tells you which car
The complaint about this category is always the same: you book a "luxury vehicle" and something else turns up. So this page starts with what the cars actually are.
Private car service
A private car, priced before you get in
Every operator in this market promises a fixed price. Very few explain how theirs is calculated, or why they are legally able to offer one when the taxi at the rank outside cannot. This page does both.
Get a price
Meet & greet: what it costs
Point to point takes two addresses; by the hour takes a pickup and a block of time. The form does both.
The price is agreed before you book. No meter, no surge pricing.
