TRANSPORTATION FROM VANCOUVER AIRPORT AREA HOTEL TO CRUISE TERMINAL

[vadersprincess12]

Hello Everyone ~ we will be sailing out of Vancouver next month.  We are staying at a hotel near the Vancouver airport and need to make arrangements for transportation to the cruise terminal.  Can anyone recommend a reliable and reasonably priced car service?  Thank you.

[martincath]

If you mean a limo, rates on those are restricted by law - while there is a min/max amount for each category of vehicle size, it's rare for anyone not to charge the minimum in my experience of price checking. Taxis are even more restricted - they only have one rate, set by law, for all companies and all vehicle sizes.

 

As to reliable - I've only ever used Aerocar on the limo side of things (they have the exclusive 'walkup' limo franchise at the airport, and are allowed to charge less than others when travel is to and from YVR) and they were fine & dandy. Cars in good condition, polite drivers, but I've never used a booking so I can't comment on how accurately those are run.

 

Taxi-wise, frankly all the cab firms have reasonable standard fleets (mostly Toyota Prius) but customer service levels kinda suck locally - it's entirely random whether you get a particularly good or bad driver and whether they show up when booked. I'd suggest your best bet for them to turn up when you want them is to have the hotel book for you - hotels tend to get precedence as a hotel can send a lot of business their way!

 

There is no Uber/Lyft here, but there are Apps you can use to get cabs sent (eTaxi and Kater, both are in Google and Apple stores).

Things you may not know - taxis inbound from YVR have fixed price zones, like limos do. Cabs are fixed at $35 YVR-pier but could be anything from $40-50 on the meter from most airport hotels on a cruise day. Since traffic is irrelevant to pricing on the fixed rate fares, if it's a busy cruise morning when the streets around Canada Place slow to a crawl you can save quite a few bucks if you travel from YVR instead of your hotel. All airport hotels have free shuttles so you can get back to the airport without any cost and take advantage of the walkup Aerocar and taxi rates.

 

Especially for a limo booking this could be a BIG saving - as by law they have to charge you a full hour on any other route, i.e. from your hotel, even though it's usually only about half an hour from the airport to downtown. That means that in a Towncar you can expect to pay almost $110 with tax & tip ($90/hr minimum, 5% tax, expected 15% tip) from your hotel but only $70 ($64 base rate) from YVR to the pier. Stretch limos run about double these numbers, SUVs are midway in-between.

 

Lastly, there is a 'milk run' airport hotel to cruise pier shuttle service - it runs a couple of trips each cruise morning and costs <$20pp. It's being run by Ace this year, and you can see if your hotel is on the list of properties they pick up at here.

Edited May 13, 2019 by martincath

[simplyrubies]

I would also recommend that you ask for your hotel to call a taxi for you. They are quite reasonably priced and the best option for car travel since we don't have Uber. The airport is also a fairly popular destination for taxis, so you should be able to find one quite easily from the taxi stand at the airpot if you don't wish for the hotel to arrange a taxi for you. 

 

If you are open to using public transportation, one option could be to take the Canada Line from the YVR station to the end of the line (Waterfront Station). It is about a 30 minute ride and comes about every 10 minutes. However, you would need to walk from the station to the cruise ship (about 10 minutes), so it would not be as convenient or comfortable as taking a taxi. It's about $10 per ticket, so the price would not be better than a taxi if you have more than 3 or 4 people in your travel party, so I would not recommend this as your first choice.