James Bond takes the Taxi tour

BossArky

Tonight I was in a taxi on the way into town. Do you know when James Bond touches down in some exotic place he sometimes hands the taxi driver outside the airport a wad of cash and asks to be shown around the city? I asked the taxi driver if this ever happened to him. Not too often apparently, but the driver did say that once a group of four large overweight Americans rented his car out for the day. They wanted to be driven around so he took them on a trip to Guinness Brewery amongst other locations. Later in the afternoon they decided that they wanted to go shopping, but being so large and unfit one woman would go shopping for 30 minutes, then come back and snooze for an hour in the back of the taxi van. She repeated this a few times apparently. At the end of the day the taxi driver charged them "a days work", which he reckoned was 30 Euro per hour. I presume he was with them for 8 hours.

1) Did anyone ever go to a place and ask a taxi driver to "show me the sites"? If so where?

2) Do you think 30 Euro per hour is a fair price for what the driver above did? I don't think so. I would have thought he would have made more driving around getting odd jobs.

JackKelly

A lot of time during the day though, would be waiting around/not having a fair. I would imagine, a taxi driver could make +30 in an hour, but he maybe waiting around for another, just looking for a second customer.

He probably wouldn't have wanted to tell someone who was about to pay him how he ripped off these american tourists maybe.

Yavvy

240 for a days word is not great for a taxi driver working a 16 hour shift on friday night (which a lot of them have to do to survive) but for 8 hours at Tuesday daytime towards the end of the month then its good. So it depends on when really.

I know of taxi drivers who have got jobs to take people to cork, Laois and Galway from Dublin Airport.

Sleepy

A website I built years ago for a Galway Taxi driver specialises in this kind of thing (car tours of Connemara and the Burren). I know he does okay out of it but in fairness, the amount of emails he gets back from customers who loved the service is incredible.

www.irelandwesttours.com is the address. Design is a bit outdated but it was built about 4 years ago.

BossArky

The taxi driver last night was also saying that a fellow rang him from the UK and wanted to see if the taxi could take 4 disabled people on a tour of Ireland, sitting in the van on their wheel chairs. The taxi driver declined saying that he could take 4 of them if they put the wheel chairs in the boot.

Didn't realise taxi drivers got such requests, although I suppose someone has to do these things.