The most stressful minutes of a business trip rarely happen in the air; they happen at the kerb.
Blacklane built a company on removing them, and at the
2024 Travelling for Business Awards the Berlin-founded chauffeur network was crowned Winner of the Chauffeur/Taxi Provider category.
Founded in 2011 by Jens Wohltorf, Blacklane's insight was that premium ground transport was excellent locally and chaotic globally: a traveller could have a trusted driver in one city and a lottery in the next. Its answer was a single platform connecting licensed, insured professional chauffeurs across hundreds of cities in more than fifty countries, booked through one app and one account, at fixed, all-inclusive prices agreed before the wheels turn. A Blacklane pick-up in Singapore now works precisely like one in London: suited chauffeur, premium vehicle, water in the door, silence unless conversation is wanted.
The details are calibrated to working travel. Chauffeurs monitor flights and adjust automatically to delays, with generous complimentary waiting time absorbing aviation's routine chaos; airport transfers, city-to-city journeys and by-the-hour hire cover a trip's full ground requirements; and corporate accounts add automated invoicing, priority booking and dedicated support that travel managers rank alongside the rides themselves. A growing electric fleet across key cities aligns the service with tightening corporate emissions reporting, while fresh growth investment secured during the period, among the year's most significant in the sector, funded continued
expansion into new markets.
Judges in 2024 weighed Blacklane against two admired London institutions, Addison Lee and Sherbet, and concluded that for organisations whose people land in many cities, one global standard beats many local excellences.
Blacklane's sustainability positioning has hardened from gesture to policy. The company has pushed electric vehicles into its most important city fleets, offsets programmes cover the remainder, and its city-to-city routes offer a lower-stress, often lower-carbon alternative to short-haul flights on corridors where trains disappoint. For corporate clients now reporting scope-three travel emissions, a chauffeur network that arrives with its own environmental accounting is a procurement answer, not just a comfort.
The
Travelling for Business Awards recognise the services that quietly hold itineraries together, and Blacklane's 2024 title named the company that turned the world's kerbs into a single, reliable front door, and keeps adding addresses to it.
