Before Traveling, Check the Estimated Cost of the Airport Taxi and the Shared Ride
While you probably know roughly how much it will cost to ride a taxi or on an app like Uber or Lyft from your home to your local airport, when you travel to a new city or country, all rates are turned off. Living in New York, I am constantly amazed at how inexpensive travel using travel sharing apps is to other cities, but I’m sure there are many others who will be much less pleasantly surprised when they figure out how much it costs. get from John F. Kennedy airport to Midtown.
At the very least, if you’re traveling with sharing apps, you can know how much your trip will cost before you even get in your car, and you can also be sure you can pay with your credit card. But if you are in a place that exclusively uses taxis to get people to and from the airport, you may run into several problems; namely, that you technically won’t know how much it will cost until you get to your destination and you are not sure that they accept credit cards. The last thing you need to do when you arrive in a new country with a broken jet lag is to find your local currency and take the exchange rate into account.
Fortunately, there are several ways to get around this – or at least options to help you prepare a little more.
Email your hotel or Airbnb host in advance
If you’re not sure how much a taxi or Uber will cost from the airport to your accommodation on average, send an email to your hotel or Airbnb host asking how much it will cost. Lexi Alford, 21 , who is the youngest person to travel in all countries, told Bloomberg that she does this before every trip:
Sending this simple email saved me hundreds of dollars over the years because I avoided overpriced taxi drivers or fixed meters. Taxi drivers can be ruthless if they cheat on you, so you have to be very confident about exactly how much it will cost and how long it will take to get from point A to point B. If you get to the hotel and the meter is incredibly high, refuse pay for it. Go to the hotel and ask for help. And if that doesn’t work, tell them to call the police. If you say so, the driver will give up. I have done this several times in Angola and Samoa. And I just did it in Guinea-Bissau.
And in some cases, your hotel may provide a shuttle from the airport to your hotel, so if you email them asking about a taxi or Uber ratings, they might let you know about the service, which could end up costing even less.
Check out RideGuru and other sites and apps
If you want to double-check that you sent the hotel, or are looking for other evaluations, you can consult with such sites as RideGuru , which allow you to specify the point of departure and destination, as well as find out which part of the trip, car or taxi service is the cheapest … Google Maps now has a sharing option that gives you a rating for Uber and Lyft (and possibly other services in the area) – just enter directions to your destination and tap the man with your hand up. Apple Maps has a similar option.
On the app side, there is Bellhop, which is free and available for iOS and Android . You can also go directly to the website of the car rental company and get an estimate of the fare from them. Uber and Lyft both offer this feature.