The short comparison
| Zone pricing | Mileage pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| API key in the page | None needed | Required, and billable |
| Quote certainty | Exact, it is your published price | Depends on the routing engine |
| Setup | List your common places and pairs | Set a rate, then fight edge cases |
| Manipulable by visitor | No | Yes, via edited coordinates |
| Long unusual routes | Falls back to enquiry | Handled, sometimes wrongly |
Why zones win for most operators
The majority of chauffeur and airport transfer work concentrates on a small number of pairs: the local town to two or three airports, the station, a couple of hotels, and the cruise terminal. Twelve to twenty priced pairs typically covers most enquiries. Those are the prices you already quote on the phone, so publishing them adds no commercial risk.
Mileage pricing also leaks your rate card. A visitor who can read the multiplier in the page source can compute your price for any journey, and competitors are the most motivated readers of your page source.
How to build a zone table that holds up
- 1List the pickup and destination names your customers use, not administrative place names.
- 2Price the pairs that matter, in both directions if they differ; symmetric lookup means you enter each pair once.
- 3Add vehicle multipliers rather than duplicating the table per vehicle.
- 4Set a return discount if you offer one, so the form does not underquote a round trip.
- 5For hourly hire, set an hourly rate and a minimum number of hours, and clamp requests below the minimum.
Never let the form invent a price. An unpriced route becomes an enquiry with an honest message; a wrong price becomes a dispute at the kerbside.
When mileage pricing is the right answer
- Corporate accounts where every journey is different and the client expects a distance-based invoice.
- Long-distance work spanning a wide region with no repeat pairs.
- Fleets already integrated with dispatch software that owns the rate card.
Even then, a zone table for your top routes plus enquiry fallback for everything else converts better than a slow calculation that occasionally returns a number you would refuse to honour.