Event & Conference Group Transport: Logistics Guide

Moving forty delegates between a hotel, a venue and an airport is a logistics problem wearing a hospitality costume. The firms that make it look effortless all run the same playbook — manifests, waves, and vehicles sized to the actual group.

Size the vehicles to the manifest, not the headcount

Vehicle	Passengers	Event sweet spot
Executive Saloon	1–3	Speakers, VIPs, board members — door-to-door on their own clock
MPV	up to 6	Panel groups, teams with kit and pull-ups
8 / 9 Seater	up to 8	The workhorse: delegation shuttles between hotel and venue
10–16 Seater	larger groups	Conference waves, airport group arrivals — arranged on request

Mixed fleets beat one big coach for most corporate events: staggered arrivals, no waiting for stragglers, and VIP movement decoupled from the delegate shuttle.

The manifest is the whole game

One spreadsheet: name, flight/train, mobile, hotel, vehicle wave — shared with your account manager
Airport arrivals grouped into waves by landing window; each wave gets a vehicle and a named driver
Every driver carries the wave list; every delegate gets the driver's number the day before
One organiser WhatsApp group with all drivers — changes propagate in seconds

Timing waves without leaving people stranded

Group arrivals rarely land on schedule together. The wave system absorbs it: flight-tracked drivers adjust to actual landings, 60 minutes' free waiting covers stragglers within a wave, and a sweep vehicle catches the genuinely late. On the outbound day, reverse it — waves by departure time, earliest flights first, sweep car last.

Billing that survives the post-event wash-up

Every movement lands on one invoice, tagged to the event code — vehicle by vehicle, wave by wave, all at fares fixed when the manifest was agreed. Recharging a client or splitting costs across business units becomes a filter on the journey log, not a fortnight of forensic accounting.