Upon a recent trip to Austin,Texas I needed a lift to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and traveling  quite heavy ,I needed to go online in order to search for a shuttle service that could take me to the airport. There really aren’t  too many shuttle service companies in Austin ,so I decided to use the services of SuperShuttle Austin. My reasoning – as I didn’t have any other point of reference , I went with the biggest company ,as you would think that if something goes wrong with 1 van, they can easily send a new one.

SuperShuttle  is actually a franchise , offering services to 33 airports and over 50 cities in the United States (as of June 2011). Based on this I felt relatively secure in booking with a company whose services I haven’t used before. I suppose the only really  important thing one needs to look at when booking a taxi/van to an airport is that the transport arrives on time and that it gets you to the airport on time, seeing that no one wants to miss a  flight , because of the  ripple effect this could have, i.e. missing an important meeting etc.

So I went ahead and booked a van online through SuperShuttle’s website , which was pretty easy and understandable (SuperShuttle is also available through an Iphone App though).  SuperShuttle is mostly a shared shuttle service , but you are able to choose an exclusive van as well. An exclusive van might come in handy if you are a big group of people at say a business conference.

The steps to book online:

1. Choose which Airport you are going  to or from.
2. Amount of Passengers.
3. Zip-code / Post Code where you want to be picked up from or going to.
4. Type of van : Shared or Exclusive.
5. Flight times and Airline.
6. Payment.

After you’ve mad a booking you’ll receive a confirmation email to confirm your booking – be sure that the times and dates are correct , as it is often very easy to make a mistake whilst filling out details like dates and times. The nice thing about booking through SuperShuttle  is that they automatically work out what time you need to be picked up in order for you to be on time for your flight. So no need to worry about that.You also receive a text message the morning before your flight to remind you that your van is on its way to your location.

I used the shared van service and there was only 1 other gentleman “sharing” the van with me(I know the vans can take up to 10 people). The SuperShuttle van arrived on-time as booked , the van was clean and  in great shape. The driver was also really friendly, he incidentally was originally from Brazil  and I found out that we had a shared interest in soccer… Anyways I have to say that I actually enjoyed the ride to the airport and  I’m happy with the service I received and don’t really have any complains. SuperShuttle’s official website can be found at SuperShuttle.com.

(Also check out my article on Austin if you’re traveling there. )

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