Who picks up the phone: reserve airport rides through a Wilmington, DE booking office

A working day, step by step

Worldwide Travel Tours takes requests for private car rides and matches each one with a local car company that has a car free at the hour asked. The office sits between you and that company: it does the asking, the matching and the passing on, while the company does the driving. Every request goes through the same six steps, in this order:

• A request comes in, through the form on the site or by phone during phone hours.
• The office looks for a local car company with a car free for that date and time.
• You receive that company's own fare for the ride, in writing, from the office.
• On your written yes, the booking goes to that company's office.
• The company confirms in writing: its name, the car and the pickup time.
• The company's driver does the ride, and you pay the company as its written fare says.

A set fee per booking passed on

The car company that takes a ride pays the office a set fee for that booking. Your fare is the company's own fare, the figure it sent you in writing, and the one you pay is the car company, as that written fare says. The reservation you end up holding is with the car company too, and its written confirmation is the message to keep.

The quote costs nothing and asks nothing of you. Before your written yes, you can withdraw a request at any moment, with no charge of any kind. After it, changes and cancelling follow the car company's own terms, which are printed in the written fare you read before saying yes.

Twenty-two ZIP codes, one county

The office covers 22 ZIP codes of New Castle County, Delaware, and every ride runs between an address in one of them and PHL, in either direction, up I-95 into Pennsylvania and off at exit 10. It works by ZIP because the city on the mail says little about distance. Ten ZIPs read Wilmington, 19801 to 19810, and by road they lie from 15.9 to 30.6 miles from the terminals. Four read Newark, from 31.7 to 37.4 miles out. Bear has its own ZIP, 19701, yet much of Bear is mailed as Newark under 19702.

So the fare is set by the ZIP of the pickup or drop-off address. Elsmere is a town of its own whose mail still says Wilmington, and the page for an airport ride from Little Italy and Elsmere to PHL shows one ZIP holding both. The area stops short of the canal: the strip around Parkside and Dragon Run at the southern edge of 19701, and a small strip around Goose Point in 19702, lie beyond it.

Riverfront address and phone hours

The office is at 750 Shipyard Drive, Suite 202, Wilmington, DE 19801, on the riverfront in Wilmington, Delaware. Requests reach it through the form on the site, by email at schedule@worldwidetraveltours.net or by phone at +1 (302) 656-7483. The phone is picked up Monday to Friday from noon to 8 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Eastern time; on Sunday the form is the way in.

The form itself takes requests 24/7. When one lands while the phone is answered, with at least two hours of phone time left that day, a written reply follows within two hours. Every other request is answered in writing by 1 p.m. Eastern on the first day the phone is next picked up, which is that very day for a request sent before the phone opens. Requests from Saturday afternoon or Sunday therefore hear back by 1 p.m. Monday. Details on airport transfer quote requests taken 24/7 sit with the other common questions.