In Mexico City a car is a regulatory object before it is a convenience. The Hoy No Circula programme applies across the whole territory of the city, «sea cual fuere el origen de las placas», and which day a given vehicle has to stand still depends on its emissions holograma and on the last digit of its plate. That is why arranging a private driver in Mexico City is a scheduling question first and a comfort question second.
GEMA Properties arranges the driver as one of the concierge errands attached to a house we administer: airport transfers, and a car at your disposal by the day, with an assigned driver. It is optional, quoted before it runs, and billed to whoever uses it — never folded into the management fee.
You are the reader of this page, not the passenger. What follows is how the request works from the owner's side of it.
Mexico City is served by two airports and only one of them is in the city. AIFA's own address puts it at kilometre 33 of the Circuito Exterior Mexiquense, in Zumpango de Ocampo, State of Mexico — a different municipality, a different state, and a different departure time from the same house. Knowing which of the two a guest is landing at, the day before rather than the morning of, is most of the work of the arrival.
The vehicle restriction is the other half. A car that cannot be driven on Thursday is not a car on Thursday, and an owner arriving on Thursday will not have thought about it — which is exactly why this is arranged by somebody whose job it is to have thought about it. Nothing about it is unusual for anybody who lives in the city; it is unusual for everybody who does not.
Two things, and they are quoted differently. An airport transfer to a villa in Mexico is one movement with a clock attached to it: a pickup at arrivals, a departure worked backwards from a flight, a run to a table booked for eight. A car at your disposal by the day is the other shape: the vehicle and the driver held for a whole day, with the stops decided as the day goes.
Both come with an assigned driver, which is the part that does not show up in the journey. Someone who knows where the house is — inside a gated development that is not the same as knowing the address — which entrance to use, who to tell when the car is at the gate, and what to do when a flight lands three hours late.
A private driver service in Mexico is often sold on a retainer; this one is not, and it is not a rental car with a driver thrown in either. Nothing is held on retainer, there is no monthly minimum, and a year in which nobody asks for a car is a year with no charge under this heading at all.
Every movement is quoted before it happens and nothing happens without an approval. The rule about who pays is agreed once, when the service is defined, so that it is never a conversation held while a car is already waiting.
Our management fee is a percentage of income, net of expenses, and no transfer is inside it. Each one that runs appears as a line of its own, with the supporting document behind it, on the monthly statement — readable in the month it happened, without asking anybody.
A private driver in Cancún, a private driver in Tulum, a private driver in San Miguel de Allende and a private car service along the Los Cabos corridor are one service running on four different clocks. What changes between them is the geography, and the geography is what sets the departure time.
If the open question is which service a house actually needs, the services overview puts them next to each other.
There is no price on this page, and there will not be one: a figure without a journey attached to it tells you nothing. What we quote against is short and always the same list.
It is not a promise about arrival times. Traffic and roads are not ours, and a promised arrival is an invented one — what we state is the departure time the journey requires, and that is the time the car leaves.
It is not a taxi and it is not an app. There is no anonymous car for an anonymous passenger; there is one house we administer and a list of people you have authorised. It is not transport sold to the public, and it is not sold without the house.
And it replaces nothing that is already contracted. The inspections, the standing suppliers and the upkeep of the building run on a calendar and do not wait to be asked; the driver is an errand, optional, quoted per use, charged to whoever used it.
Tell us where the house is, how often you are in it, whether it is ever let, and who you would want to be able to ask for a car without asking you first. We will answer with what that would involve where your house actually stands.
Yes, and it is arranged the day before rather than the morning of, because the Hoy No Circula programme applies across the whole city whatever the origin of the plates, and the day a vehicle has to stand still depends on its holograma and its plate. The vehicle is chosen for the date, which is the part a visitor cannot do from abroad.
Yes, through the same channel, and they pay for it. You set the boundary once — what may be offered and what has to come back to you first — and after that a transfer is quoted to the guest and never taken out of your income.
The driver waits, and waiting time is one of the things the quotation states before the movement runs, rather than something that appears afterwards. We do not answer with an arrival time in either direction: what we set is the departure time the journey requires, worked backwards from the flight as it is actually landing.
Yes, in every area where we administer houses, though what owners ask for differs: on the Los Cabos corridor the car is usually held by the day, in Acapulco most owners arrive by road and want a driver once they are there, and in Tulum and Playa del Carmen the first question is which of two airports the flight lands at.
No, and it is not meant to look as though it were. The fee is a percentage of income, net of expenses; the driver is a concierge errand, quoted before each movement and invoiced separately to whoever asked for it.
Tell us where the house is, how often you are in it, and who should be able to ask for a car without asking you first. We will answer with what that would involve there, in writing.