It is the phrase that appears most often on airport quotations and the one most likely to be assumed rather than confirmed. Two operators can both offer meet and greet and mean noticeably different things by it, so it pays to be precise about what is included before the day rather than discovering the difference at four in the morning.
Below is the definition, the sequence a proper in-terminal collection follows, the situations where it earns its place, and the entirely separate airport service that shares the same name. Getting that last distinction right saves a good deal of confusion when comparing quotations.
How an in-terminal collection unfolds
The chauffeur arrives before the scheduled landing time and puts the car in a short-stay car park rather than circling the terminal. They then walk through to the arrivals hall and take up position where passengers emerge from customs, holding a board with your name on it, or a discreet alternative if you would rather not have your name displayed in public.
When you appear, the chauffeur takes the luggage, walks you to the car and settles you in before loading. The point of the arrangement is that you have somebody to look for the moment you step through the doors, rather than a set of directions to follow and a car park to find while carrying bags after a long flight.
When it is worth arranging
It matters most where the walk from arrivals to the pickup area is long, awkward or unfamiliar, and where there is enough luggage that managing it alone is genuinely unpleasant. It also matters for anyone travelling with children, with limited mobility, or into a terminal they have never used before, which is a much larger group than it first sounds.
- Long-haul arrivals, when you are tired and the terminal is unfamiliar
- Families with young children, pushchairs and several cases
- Passengers who would rather not walk a distance to a car park
- First-time visitors to the United Kingdom
- Group arrivals where people clear immigration at different speeds
- Any arrival where the pickup zone sits well away from the terminal
Kerbside collection compared
Kerbside means the chauffeur waits in the designated private hire pickup area and you walk out to meet the car, guided by a message giving the bay or level. It is quicker for a passenger travelling light who knows the airport well, and it avoids the car park visit entirely, which some people prefer on a short domestic hop.
Neither is inherently better. What matters is that everybody knows which one has been arranged. Our confirmations state whether the chauffeur will be inside the hall or at a pickup point, and a WhatsApp thread runs alongside the booking so a message reaches the right person immediately if the plan needs to change.
The other meet and greet
At UK airports, meet and greet also describes a parking product for people driving themselves. You hand your own car over at the terminal, somebody parks it for you, and it is returned to the terminal when you land. It has nothing to do with chauffeur travel, and it is the single most common source of confusion when people search the phrase.
A third, looser usage appears in hospitality, where meet and greet describes a host welcoming guests on arrival at an event. In chauffeur travel the term should always mean an in-terminal collection by your chauffeur, and if a quotation is ambiguous, ask which meaning is intended before comparing it with anything else.
