AI for transport and transfer companies: from request to driver

AI is used at transport and transfer companies for six jobs: the first reply to a request, asking for missing details, quoting from written price rules, assigning the booking to a vehicle and driver, sending the job sheet to the driver and keeping the passenger informed in their own language. In each of them the reply, the quote or the record is prepared by the system. The company still sets the price and chooses the vehicle and the driver.

Airport transfers follow air traffic. According to DHMI, Turkey's state airports authority, airports in Turkey handled 246.8 million arriving and departing passengers in 2025, of whom 145.2 million flew international routes. A report by the Istanbul Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, based on the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's border statistics, puts foreign arrivals to Turkey that year at 52.8 million. Of the 18.97 million foreign visitors who entered through Istanbul, 18.4 million came in through its airports. That is why transfer requests so often arrive in another language. Because they depend on flight times, they also arrive around midnight or a few hours before a flight.

Which jobs can AI help a transfer company with?

1. First reply: requests from WhatsApp, the web form and the phone land in one list and are answered at night too.
2. Missing details: flight number, party size, luggage, child seats and addresses are asked for one by one.
3. Quotes: prices come from rules written in advance by route, vehicle type and time of day.
4. Vehicle and driver assignment: bookings go into a calendar built in vehicles and drivers, so one vehicle never gets two jobs at the same time.
5. Driver job sheets: the meeting name, flight number and location go to the driver's phone.
6. Passenger updates: confirmation, driver details and the meeting point go out in the language the passenger wrote in.

How is a request that arrives at night handled?

A transfer company hears from customers in four or five places: WhatsApp, the phone, the web form, hotel reception desks and agency emails. When a message sent at night waits until morning, the passenger books with someone else. The setup gathers all of these channels into one list.

A WhatsApp message is answered from the information the company provides: the airports served, vehicle types, luggage rules and price rules. The passenger is told clearly that they are writing to an AI assistant. When the answer is not known, nothing is made up; the conversation passes to someone in operations. Meta's WhatsApp Business policy also requires a business that uses automated replies to offer a clear and direct way to reach a person.

Calls are picked up by a voice assistant. A call at night is logged as a request and waits in the operations approval list in the morning. We describe this on our AI voice assistant page, and the single list of channels on our request handling page.

What details does a transfer booking need?

At a minimum, a transfer booking needs:

• the passenger's full name and phone number
• the flight number and landing time
• party size, number of bags and any child seats
• the pick-up and drop-off addresses

Requests usually arrive with only part of this, and confirming the rest takes several messages. In the setup each missing field is asked for in turn, and the booking does not go for approval until the details are complete.

In Turkey, some of these details are a legal requirement. The Road Transport Regulation makes a contract of carriage compulsory for unscheduled passenger transport, and the contract includes a passenger list: name and Turkish ID number for citizens, nationality and passport number for foreign passengers. Under the same regulation, A1, A2, B2 and D2 certificate holders report the vehicle plate, the crew and the passenger list for occasional, group and shuttle trips to U-ETDS, the system run by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. The report is due at least one hour before departure. For trips that start at an airport it is due two hours before, a rule added to the regulation on 1 October 2025.

So a request that sits overnight costs more than a lost customer. Details for an early-morning airport pick-up must be complete before the reporting window closes. When the booking record holds every field, the information needed for the report sits in one place. The ministry also offers a web service so that operators can report from their own software, and whether to connect it is discussed during discovery, based on how the company reports today. The legal duty to report stays with the certificate holder.

How are quotes tied to price rules?

A transfer price depends on a few things: route, vehicle type, time of day and party size. Some companies add a night surcharge, others charge for waiting time. These rules are written down once. If a request falls inside them, the quote is prepared from the rules and sent to the passenger.

Requests outside the rules go to the approval list: an out-of-town address, a large group, an extra stop or a special vehicle. The operations lead prices those. The system never produces a price that is not in the rules. When prices change, the rule is updated in one place and the next quote uses the new figure.

How is a booking assigned to a vehicle and driver?

An approved booking goes into a calendar built in vehicles and drivers. One vehicle cannot get two jobs at the same time, and a clash shows on screen. The system only shows which vehicles and drivers are free; the operations lead decides who takes which job.

Once a job is assigned, the driver's phone receives the job sheet: the name for the meeting sign, the flight number, landing time, meeting point and destination. All of the day's jobs sit in one list in the panel, so when the office opens in the morning the jobs that came in overnight are already there. We describe the calendar on our online booking and scheduling page.

How does the driver hear about a flight delay?

The flight number is saved with the booking. By connecting a flight data service, the driver and the operations desk are notified when the arrival time changes. Which service is used is agreed during discovery. Without that connection, the operations lead enters the new time by hand and the driver receives an updated job sheet.

What does the passenger receive, and in which language?

The passenger gets the confirmation in the language they wrote in. It includes the driver's name, the vehicle plate and the meeting point, so passenger and driver see the same details: the name on the sign, the meeting place and the time.

WhatsApp has rules for this. Under Meta's policy, a business may only message people who have given their number and opted in. When the business starts the conversation, or more than 24 hours have passed since the customer's last message, it must use a template Meta has approved in advance. Confirmations and driver details are therefore set up as approved templates. We cover this on our WhatsApp Business integration page.

What goes into these messages matters too. Turkey's Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages does not require prior consent for notices about a purchase and similar matters, but it bans promoting goods or services inside them. A confirmation therefore carries only the booking details, and offers go only to passengers who have agreed to receive marketing messages.

Do agency and hotel requests land in the same list?

Yes. Whether agency and hotel requests come by email, form or WhatsApp, they go into the same booking list, with the agency or hotel recorded against each one. At the end of the month, the record shows how many jobs came from each channel. Which channels to connect is agreed together during discovery.

How is passenger data protected?

The passenger's name, phone number, flight number and passport number are personal data under Turkey's data protection law (KVKK, Law No. 6698). The law requires data to be relevant, limited and proportionate to the purpose. So the driver receives only what the job needs: the meeting name, the flight, the time and the address. The passport number does not go on the driver's job sheet.

Passengers are told in a privacy notice why the data is processed and to whom it may be passed. If data is to be processed on servers abroad, the transfer conditions in Article 9 of the law apply. Where the data is processed is agreed in writing before the build.

What happens to a request that arrives after midnight?

Here is how the setup works at an airport transfer company. Shortly after midnight, a message arrives on WhatsApp in English asking for a transfer from a flight landing the next afternoon to a hotel in the city centre. The reply goes out in English, drawn from the company's information, and asks for party size, luggage and the flight number.

Once the details are complete, the price is prepared from the route and vehicle rules and sent to the passenger. When the passenger accepts, a booking record is opened. In the morning the operations lead assigns the job to a driver, and the job sheet goes to the driver's phone. The passenger receives the driver's name, the vehicle plate and the meeting point.

Where should AI not be used in transfers?

• Prices outside the rules and negotiation: the operations lead sets any price the rules do not cover.
• Choosing vehicles and drivers: operations decides which driver takes which job.
• Complaints, lost property and accidents: these conversations go straight to a person.
• Information without a source: meeting points, waiting times and flight times are never guessed.

Where should a transfer company start?

1. For one week, count which channel each request comes from, how many arrive at night and how many messages it takes to confirm a booking.
2. Write down your price rules: route, vehicle type, time of day and extra charges.
3. Start with request handling and the booking record.
4. After a month, look at unanswered requests and confirmation messages, then move on to driver job sheets.

ALTAI Digital starts with a discovery of about a week, covering the company's channels, price rules, fleet and current reporting routine. We then prepare a demo; if you like it, your requirements go into a detailed brief form and we build. First live use usually opens within four to eight weeks, depending on how many channels and systems are connected. After launch we keep measuring, reporting and maintaining.

Every part joins one panel, so requests, bookings, driver assignments and passenger messages can be followed on one screen. We describe our approach for the sector on our transport and transfers page and the WhatsApp side on our WhatsApp AI assistant page.