Airport meet and greet

From touchdown to the car: what actually happens

From landing to the exit usually takes 30 to 60 minutes. The most variable part is passport control: at the night peak, when several flights land together, the queue stretches several times over, while during the day you can be through in ten minutes.

So the representative does not work from the landing time but from the arrivals board - by the time your flight's bags appear on the belt, they are already at the exit. The driver meanwhile waits close by and comes the moment they are called, so you are not wandering round a car park.

Who meets you, and why it is not the driver

For a meet and greet the representative and the driver are two different people. That is deliberate: the driver needs to be with the car, the representative needs to be in the hall, and one person cannot do both at once.

Representatives speak Georgian, English and Russian. If you need another language - Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew - tell us in advance, because such a person is not always available and we start looking early.

When your bag does not arrive

This happens more often than people expect, especially on connecting flights. Complaining in the hall gets you nowhere: the loss has to be registered officially at the baggage tracing desk before you leave the building.

The representative takes you there, helps with the form, and makes sure the hotel rather than your home address is written down for delivery. You keep the reference number and a copy - everything is traced by that number.

Over the next few days we follow up on delivery ourselves. A bag that has been found is often brought at night and left with hotel reception, so we warn the front desk in advance to keep it from going missing a second time.

The first half hour: phone, money, connection

Mobile operators have kiosks right in the arrivals hall, and a local SIM is set up in a few minutes with your passport. If roaming is expensive, this is the first thing we suggest - in the city everything runs through your phone, from taxis to restaurant bookings.

There are cash machines in the hall and you can take out lari on the spot. Exchanging currency at the airport, as everywhere, is less favourable than in town - so people change only a small amount here and the rest later.

Cards are accepted almost everywhere in Tbilisi and Batumi, but in the mountains and in village wine cellars you will still need cash. The representative will tell you this in the first few minutes, before it turns into a problem.

When we meet someone else on your behalf

A frequent request: a parent is arriving alone and speaks no English, or a friend is flying in for the first time while you are at work. In that case the meet and greet is an extension of your own hand.

We give the representative a photo or description of the guest in advance, and give both of them each other's number. At every stage you get a short message: landed, through control, has the bags, in the car, arrived.

If the guest is elderly, the representative walks them all the way to the hotel room and checks that everything is in order. That is the detail you cannot control by phone, and the reason people most often choose this service.

Meeting a guest on behalf of a company

When a company invites a partner or a new member of staff, the meet and greet is the host's first impression. The sign can carry the company logo, and the representative can hand the guest a programme, a SIM card and contacts right there.

In this case the report goes to your office rather than to the guest. We write when they arrived, when they reached the hotel and whether there were any problems - which saves an assistant from chasing them by phone.

Settlement is then usually by bank transfer, with a contract and an invoice. If guests arrive regularly, we agree a standing arrangement once rather than starting from scratch each time.

Departure assistance and Tax Free

On departure the representative is most useful at check-in: where your airline's desk is, how many bags you may drop and what should stay in your cabin bag. It is worth it above all when you have a lot of suitcases or children with you.

If you bought goods in Georgia under Tax Free, the VAT refund has to be processed before check-in - the goods, the receipt and your passport all need to be in hand at that point. The representative shows you where the desk is; the refund itself is paid by the service, and the rules are on the receipt.

That is exactly why departure assistance needs an early start. If you have Tax Free, we add half an hour to the pick-up time, because there is a queue at that desk too.

Two separate tickets and a connection

If you connect in Tbilisi on two separate tickets, your luggage will not transfer by itself. You have to clear passport control, collect your bags and check them in again - a full arrival and a full departure within a few hours.

Georgia's entry rules apply at that point too: if your nationality needs a visa, you need it for the connection as well. We check this in advance, because finding out at the airport is already too late.

We do not advise less than three hours between flights like these. The representative meets you on arrival, takes you and your bags up to the departures level and stays with you until check-in, so you are not finding your own way between halls.

If we cannot find each other

The most common cause is a flat phone or roaming switched off. So our rule is simple: the representative stays at the agreed spot until the last passenger from your flight has come out, and does not leave because a call went unanswered.

We ask one thing of you: if you cannot see the sign, do not leave the building and do not get into the first taxi that approaches you. Stay by the exit - you will be found, and the information desk can dial our number for you.

If the mistake was ours - the representative was late or standing in the wrong place - we do not argue about it. We own it and settle it with you so that you are not left out of pocket.

The name on the sign, and transliteration

We write the name on the sign in Latin letters, exactly as it appears in the passport. That matters: a guest often fails to recognise their own name transliterated into Georgian or Russian.

Arabic and Hebrew names often exist in several Latin spellings. So we ask you to copy the name exactly from the passport - even a one-letter difference causes confusion at the exit.

If you would rather the name was not shown, the sign can carry a code word or a company name instead. We and the driver both know it in advance, so no other passenger can walk off using the same word.

When you do not need a meet and greet

If you have been to Georgia before, are travelling alone with a backpack and arriving in daytime, a meet and greet is unnecessary. Ride-hailing apps work at the airport too, and the official taxi rank is right outside the exit.

It is also unnecessary when the hotel offers its own transfer and it is already included in the rate. We would not advise paying twice - but do ask the hotel whether their driver works night flights as well.

A meet and greet pays off when the factors stack up: night, children, a lot of luggage, a first visit, a language barrier. One of them rarely justifies the cost. Two or more almost always do.

Kutaisi and Batumi: what is different

At Kutaisi several low-cost flights often land almost together, so the arrivals hall fills up quickly. That is when a representative with a sign genuinely saves time - finding a driver in a crowd is a task in itself.

There are also buses from Kutaisi to Tbilisi and to Batumi, timed to the flights. For someone travelling alone with little luggage that is a perfectly reasonable option - and we will tell you so directly.

Batumi's terminal is small with a single exit, so a meet there is the simplest of all. In summer seasonal flights fill the terminal quickly and drivers are busy in those months too - book early.

Winter, fog and a different airport

In winter, in fog or heavy snow, an aircraft sometimes lands not at its own airport but somewhere else. It is rare, but it happens, and working out what is going on at night is hard enough.

When it does, we follow the flight and send the car to the new airport. From Tbilisi to Kutaisi is three hours, so the driver often sets off before the airline has arranged its own transport.

We tell you the cost of that change in advance and send the car only with your agreement. In such cases the airline usually arranges onward transport as well - slower, but for some people it is enough.

What we need from you

The minimum: the flight number, the date, the name exactly as in the passport and the number of passengers. From the flight number we find the time and the terminal ourselves.

It helps a great deal to know the number and size of bags, especially special items - skis, a bicycle, a pushchair. That is what the vehicle is chosen by, and we do not intend to change it on the spot.

And finally, the messenger we should reach you on: WhatsApp, Telegram or Viber. An SMS to a foreign number is often delayed, whereas a messenger works over the airport's free Wi-Fi as well.

A child flying alone

When a child flies unaccompanied, the airline hands them over only to the person named as the recipient on its form, and only against photo ID. That is the airline's rule, and nobody gets round it.

So if we are meeting the child, we need to know before the form is filled in. We will tell you who the representative will be, and you enter exactly their name and details - changing it afterwards is not easy.

After the handover the representative messages you immediately and accompanies the child to the car and on to the destination. They take no other job that day - this is the one case where we hold to that as a principle.

Arriving with a pet

The import documents and the check for an animal stay between you and the border service - we cannot speed any of that up. Our part is whatever begins once that check is done.

Not every driver takes animals in the car, so we agree it in advance. We need the size of the carrier and the animal's weight - a large dog means a different vehicle from a small cat in a bag.

After a long flight an animal often urgently needs a walk. The representative will show you a suitable spot outside the building before you get into the car.

A morning arrival, before the room is ready

Hotel check-in is usually in the afternoon, while flights often land in the morning. The result is people sitting in a hotel lobby at seven in the morning waiting for a room - the most exhausting hours of the whole trip.

There are three ways out. The first is to book early check-in in advance, which the hotel charges separately. The second is to leave the bags at reception and go for breakfast or a walk. The third is to book the previous night, which often costs about the same as early check-in.

The representative calls the hotel from the road and tells you whether the room is ready before you get there. If it is not, the driver can take you straight to breakfast - which beats waiting in the lobby.