Meet and Greet, Done Properly: Airport, Rail Station and Hotel Pickups

Corporate Travel Know-How2026-11-11·All articles

A meet-and-greet looks like a driver standing at an exit holding a board. In practice it is an information chain: the more specific the client's input, the more precise the driver's position. Airport, rail station and hotel pickups share one logic — narrow "which exit will this person come out of" down to a single fixed point, then meet them there. The table below sets out what each module needs and where it breaks.

Module	What we need from you	What the driver does	Where it usually goes wrong
Airport pickup	Flight number, terminal, name or group name, luggage count	Tracks the flight, enters on actual landing time, meets at the exit with a board, takes the luggage and walks the guest to the car	Two arrival exits and no agreement on which one to use
Rail station pickup	Train number, carriage number if available, name, luggage count	With a carriage number, predicts the exit and holds position; without one, patrols both exits or meets at an agreed point	No stopping allowed at the station forecourt and no pick-up point fixed in advance
Hotel pickup	Hotel name, arrival or departure time, name	Waits at the main entrance with a board, on site 10–15 minutes early	Board blocks the entrance; guest comes down early or changes room and nobody is told

1. Airport pickup: the flight number is the starting point, not a footnote

The one hard input for an airport pickup is the flight number. With it we track the flight and send the driver in on actual landing time, not on the scheduled time printed on the ticket. That single point decides whether the driver is standing inside the arrivals hall or circling the airport outside.

Domestic and international arrivals move at different speeds. Domestic passengers typically need 20–40 minutes from touchdown to the exit, allowing for taxiing, bridge, walking and baggage; international and regional flights add immigration, customs and baggage, usually 45–90 minutes. So the pickup time is a window rather than a minute, and the driver's job is to be in position for the whole of it.

The exit is where airport pickups most often fail. Some airports have more than one domestic arrival exit — Beijing Daxing and Shenzhen among them — and passengers on the same flight can emerge in different directions. In that case the exit must be agreed before departure, and the driver stands at a fixed spot with the board facing out. An agreement means neither party moves; if both are searching, they usually miss each other.

Meeting the guest is not the end of it. The driver takes the luggage trolley and walks them to the car park, rather than leaving them to find the vehicle on the arrivals level. That walk is usually 3–8 minutes, and it is the line between an ordinary pickup and a good one.

2. Rail station pickup: the carriage number is the efficiency lever

Rail pickups are more complex than airport pickups, because the exit a passenger uses depends on where the train stopped and which carriage they were in.

If the client can give a carriage number, the driver can predict roughly which exit the passenger will use and be standing there in advance — turning a patrol into a fixed post. It saves people and time, and the experience is consistent. The carriage number is the highest-value piece of information in the whole chain, and most clients do not know they can supply it.

Without it there are two options. Where the station has two exits, the driver works between them; alternatively both parties agree a clear meeting point — a coffee shop or convenience store by the exit, somewhere with a sign, easy to describe and with space to stand. A meeting point needs three specifics: which exit, which shop, inside or outside. "The station exit" is not an agreement.

3. Hotel pickup: a board at the door, apparently the simplest

The hotel pickup is the simplest action: the driver waits at the main entrance with a board. Simple is not the same as safe. Two details decide it. Be on site 10–15 minutes early, so the guest is never waiting for the driver. And stand clear of the door and the pedestrian flow, with the board facing arrivals — visible without blocking anyone.

Hotels offer one extra convenience: the lobby can pass on a message. If the guest changes room, comes down early, or is held up in a meeting, one sentence at reception saves ten minutes of two people searching for each other. Leaving the name and expected time with the desk does real work.

4. The name board: information design on a piece of card

Boards are customisable — a client logo added on request, or produced directly from artwork the client supplies. For companies receiving international visitors, running events or hosting delegations this is routine: a consistent board is part of the reception standard itself.

Carry only what is needed to identify: a name or group name plus a short event label. No full company name, no job title. Avoid printing the drop-off address, which would expose where the passenger is going.
Bilingual, with type large enough to read at a distance; one background colour per group so they can be told apart at a glance.
Hold it at about chest height, clear of the exit passage, and not above head height where it blocks the people behind.

5. Departures: the direction reverses, so the departure time has to be calculated

Pickups wait; drop-offs race. What we deliver for a departure is a recommended leaving time, and it is not a fixed formula — it depends on a set of inputs:

Whether the flight is international or domestic, and which terminal — check-in and security queues differ between terminals.
The train and the station — major hub stations have longer access, security and gate walks.
Headcount and luggage — more people and more bags multiply check-in and security time.
The actual starting point — a hotel, an office or a neighbouring city all behave differently on the road.
Traffic on the day — holidays, peak hours and major events congest the approach roads.

As a baseline: domestic flights generally call for arriving at the airport 1.5 hours ahead, and international flights at least two hours; high-speed rail generally 40–60 minutes before departure, with more margin at hub stations and on holidays. These are starting points only. The recommendation itself follows the five inputs above, which is why we give it per itinerary rather than as a generic answer.

We have run pickups at major airports and stations across the country for years and have handled most of what can happen. There is one test we hold ourselves to: once a guest has confirmed boarding, or is already on the train, then as long as they can walk out of the arrival exit, a missed pickup is something we have not let happen. Keeping a passenger's itinerary on track is always the priority at InKeyGo.

Next step: send the flight number, or the train number with carriage number, together with headcount, luggage count and the hotel name and time. We will come back with a pickup plan including a recommended departure time. For multi-city itineraries, see nationwide operations; for airport and station transfers alone, see airport transfers; to talk it through, see contact us.