Airport shuttle service is a very lucrative business startup, but only if you know how to start an airport shuttle service. Some of the successful shuttle business owners have accounted for revenue of 30,000 USD in the first year, while jumping to 64,000 USD by the third year.
I will be covering all the basics about starting an airport shuttle business to help you start and run your airport transportation company successfully.
Learn everything about the day-to-day activities of an airport transportation company owner and staff, who are the target market, what is the growth potential, startup costs, legal requirements, and much more in this complete guide on starting your own transportation business in the airport shuttle vertical.
I’ll be answering all these questions and more in this blog.
Enough small talk. Let’s start the guide to starting your own airport shuttle transport business.
Is An Airport Shuttle Business Right For Me?
The shuttle services business offers a huge range of shuttle services. So, you have to analyze and decide what type of shuttle service you wish to offer with your shuttle startup.
Here are few shuttle services you can explore:
So, is shuttle business profitable? All the above-mentioned services are some of the most profitable and popular options for starting a shuttle transportation business.
Make sure you have the right vehicle for your targeted service. Before starting an airport shuttle service, you need to ensure the vehicle is spacious enough to suffice for luggage. Previously it was considered that transport jobs like this were only for people who were comfortable with a driver’s life on the road for most of the day. But this doesn’t stand true if you are working with an airport shuttle service app of your company.
If you are in the phase of the airport shuttle business plan, you can start from the comfort of your home, even without owning a van or bus. The drivers who own vans or buses can register for your shuttle service app just like Uber drivers do with Uber.
So, anyone with or without previous experience in shuttle service can start such a transport service for airports.
What are the responsibilities of an airport shuttle Driver (& staff)?
The main job of a shuttle service is to transport people between the airport and homes, hotels, or any other location that the passengers request. These services are used by groups of family, friends, or acquaintances, and single travelers.
In brief, a shuttle business owner and his/her team (on-field & off-field) have the following responsibilities:
Initially, many entrepreneurs work at several posts to reduce overhead expenses. This means they drive the passengers as well as perform all the administrative duties of the business.
This multitasking becomes much more comfortable if they have a reliable shuttle management software solution or airport shuttle dispatch software accessible on their smartphone or tablet. Such software solutions are highly scalable. So, as the business grows, vehicles are added to the fleet, and more drivers and office employees are added; the solution grows to accommodate the larger scale of working.
How Does An Airport Shuttle Business Make Money?
You can either charge each customer a fee for traveling from the pickup to the drop point with charges per mile or just charge a flat fee for getting to the drop location. Also important is to decide whether you would be offering your services to only large groups heading to the same destination or serving individual travelers, too.
What Are The Steps To Start An Airport Shuttle Business?
We will see the complete step-by-step process of how to start an airport shuttle service:
1. Research Your Competition
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Research should be the first and most crucial step for building any business. Information is the sharpened axe you would need to chop down the competition in your business.
2. Find Your Target Users
Find your target audience depending on the city in which you are planning to start your shuttle service. If your city is a tourist destination, then the majority of the people traveling to your city airport would be tourists.
In this case, your target audience should be vacationers coming there from around the world, so you should contact local hotels, motels, and airport authorities to let them know about your services. You can also set up a commission-based trade with them in return for getting customers from their reference.
3. Complete Legal Documentation
4. Purchase the Vehicle
If you don’t want to follow the Uber Business model of partnering up with vehicle owners. You can initially start with a single van/bus if your budget doesn’t allow you more. While purchasing a shuttle vehicle, you need to make sure that the vehicle is spacious and can hold sufficient passengers, including luggage. You can go for a whole fleet of vans/buses; this approach will get you a considerable discount from the vehicle dealer.
5. Setting Up An Office
Initially, you alone can handle the administrative work of the company from your home, saving money on office space and office staff, and as your company profits and grows, you can hire more staff to work on the administrative part.
6. Digitization
The first step of digitization is to develop a mobile app or a website for your airport shuttle service business. Having your own company website and airport shuttle service app where the passengers can directly book seats in your shuttle will give a drastic boost to your earnings.
Airport shuttle service app development, as Uber did with taxi service is very profitable for the business. To build a company website, you need a structured website development team, and you can go with a mobile app development team for an airport shuttle service app.
You can initially start with a single van/bus if your budget doesn’t allow you more. While purchasing a shuttle vehicle, you need to make sure that the vehicle is spacious and can hold sufficient luggage, including passengers. You can go for a whole fleet of vans/buses; this approach will get you a considerable discount from the vehicle dealer.
Read More: Bus Ticket Booking App Development Guide
Which Are the Top Airport Shuttle Services in the World?
Here are some airport taxi businesses that you can analyze for your shuttle service app development.
Key Takeaways for Your App Development:
Some Inside Tips on Marketing Your Airport Shuttle Startup
For all the existing airport shuttle businesses that have had stagnant revenue without any significant rise. Many travelers are slipping through your fingers just because you don’t have a digital presence on the Internet. Go with a mobile app design service to make a clean and intuitive layout that makes the app more engaging and easy to use. Also, add posters and banners inside the airport with a QR code to your app download link. People need to see your company’s name as soon as they enter or leave the airport.
How Can Excellent Webworld Help You With Airport Shuttle Service?
The above article should have helped you understand how to start an airport shuttle service with the steps. This can help you with the current marketplace of shuttle services. However, one critical aspect of this process is understanding the nuances of the transportation industry. Excellent Webworld is an experienced shuttle app development company with domain expertise.
One of our standout projects is Connect Kargo. It’s an on-demand transportation services platform for shipments. This helps customers with on-demand transportation.
We have over 13 years of experience providing taxi app development services. Our team of experts has successfully developed high-performance taxi apps. With more than 900 successful projects, our experts have catered to different client needs in the transportation industry. Contact us now to learn more about our transportation solutions.
FAQs
If you want to start a shuttle business, vehicles like minibuses, high-roof vans, and large SUVs are great choices. These vehicles provide flexibility in passenger capacity, comfort, and practicality.
The potential of the profitability and demand can be a good business option for you. In the urban areas, shuttle services offer solutions for employee commutes, airport transfers, and other specific needs.
A commercial transportation option that offers transportation to and from airports for a fee. This service involves both shared and private vehicles, such as vans or buses.
Starting a shuttle service can range from 20,000 to 350,000+ USD, but it depends on multiple factors such as complexity, country, business model, and fleet size.
Article By
Mahil Jasani began his career as a developer and progressed to become the COO of Excellent Webworld. He uses his technical experience to tackle any challenge that arises in any department, be it development, management, operations, or finance.
