A Tbilisi airport pickup is supposed to be the simplest piece of an itinerary. Often it isn’t. Here is what to get right, written for the people doing the bookings.
The airport is closer than you think
Tbilisi International (TBS) sits 17 kilometres southeast of the city centre, and the terminal expansion due as early as 2028 will not move it. The airport puts the drive at 20 to 30 minutes, depending on traffic. Compared to most capitals, that’s a short transfer.
A guest off a long-haul flight may expect a Heathrow-style hour-long crawl. Build the lower expectation in your communication. It makes you look generous when the car arrives at the hotel sooner than promised.
The early-morning question
The first question worth asking is what time the flight lands or departs.
Pickup flights before 7am or departure flights before 9am are the trickiest slot. Two reasons. First, the road is empty and the drive is short, which means the buffer evaporates if anything goes wrong. Second, it is the hour when a car that fails to turn up is hardest to replace. If a guest needs absolute reliability for a 5am pickup, book it days ahead rather than the night before, and get the fare in writing: our Tbilisi airport transfer service is a fixed fare per car, confirmed in writing before the car is dispatched.
Late-night flights (arrivals after 11pm) are the second-trickiest. The terminal is quiet, baggage takes about as long as the daytime, but if there’s a delay the guest is tired and the buffer is gone. Ask when you book what happens if the flight is late; what is included is confirmed in writing with the fare, before the car is dispatched.
What “flexible pickup” actually means
A brief that asks for a “flexible pickup window” can mean two different things, and they need different handling.
Scenario A: the guest knows their flight and wants the car to be there when they walk out, even if customs is slow.
Scenario B: the guest’s plans haven’t been finalised and they might land within a 4-hour window.
For Scenario A, you don’t actually need flexibility from the chauffeur. You need someone following the flight in real time rather than the booking time. Ask whoever you book whether they do, and how a delay reaches the driver without you having to call.
For Scenario B, you need a car on standby for an open window, which is a different booking from a fixed airport fare; ask in writing before you promise it to the guest. The fixed fares are in what a Tbilisi airport transfer costs. Don’t blur the two; you’ll either pay too much for A or be unhappy with B.
A short list of things that go wrong
The same five things tend to go wrong:
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Flight delays the guest didn’t communicate. They got bumped to a later flight and forgot to update the concierge. Solution: put the flight number in the booking, not just a time, and ask how a change of flight reaches the driver.
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Guest and driver at different spots. The arrivals hall has an official, signposted meeting point by the information desk, on the airport’s arrivals hall page. Agree the meeting place when you book, give the guest a number to call, and say if the guest has booked the airport’s own Meet & Greet, whose agents stay with them until the car.
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Recognising each other. Agree when you book how guest and driver will find each other, and whether the guest’s name may be shown.
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Wrong destination. Hotel name confusion (Tbilisi has several hotels with similar names; Stamba and Rooms, both Adjara properties, sit side by side in the same complex and are easy to swap). Confirm the street address and the hotel name together; arriving at Tbilisi’s hotels by car covers the drop-off side.
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Currency surprise on a paid-on-arrival booking. Tbilisi prefers Georgian lari for small payments, and a guest who has just landed may not have any. Settle the chauffeur fee and how it will be paid in advance, in writing, in the booking currency. Don’t ask the guest to pay cash on arrival.
Booking: how concierges do it
Three booking patterns cover most of what concierges and corporate travel managers need.
For business travellers on regular routes, book the same car class from the same small fleet each time, which is what our multi-day and corporate chauffeur service is for; every fare is still confirmed in writing before the car is dispatched. Where the booking covers a week of driving rather than a run of airport runs, what a multi-day booking actually asks of a chauffeur is a different brief again.
For one-off VIP arrivals, brief a day in advance, with the same fields we set out in the booking brief we ask concierges for: flight number, guest name, hotel exact address with the hotel name, any requests, return transfer dates if known. The fare comes back confirmed in writing before the car is dispatched.
For wave arrivals (a group landing on different flights within an afternoon), book the cars against the flights and put someone on your side in charge of the manifest at the airport. Where the party travels on together afterwards, the V-Class changes that arithmetic and one vehicle replaces two. This is a different conversation; if you’re in this scenario, write to us with the manifest and we’ll quote.
A short closing note
Airport transfers are not really about the driving. The driving part is 25 minutes. The booking, the buffer, the address, the plan for a late flight, the not-blaming-the-guest. That’s the work. Many arrivals are not staying in the city either: the two routes out of Tbilisi worth planning before the flight are the wine roads of Kakheti and Kazbegi up the Military Highway. If you’d like a chauffeur for regular or occasional Tbilisi pickups, write to booking@soitblack.com or send us the dates.