Where Does Your Chauffeur Meet You at FLL, MIA, and PBI?

What is the difference between meet-and-greet and curbside?

Meet-and-greet means your chauffeur parks, walks into the terminal, and waits in the arrivals hall holding a sign with your name. Curbside means the vehicle comes to the kerb once you call or text to say you are outside with your bags.

The practical difference is who does the waiting. With meet-and-greet, the chauffeur absorbs the uncertainty — customs, a slow bag, a long walk from a far gate — and you walk out to someone who is already there. With curbside, you absorb it, and the vehicle stages nearby until you are ready.

Which one you want is genuinely situational. Meet-and-greet earns its cost on an international arrival, for anyone travelling with children or a lot of luggage, for an elderly passenger, for a first visit to an unfamiliar airport, and for anyone being collected on someone else's behalf. Curbside is perfectly good for a frequent traveller with a cabin bag who knows the airport.

What matters is deciding before you land. The worst version of this is arriving with no arrangement, standing at a kerb where commercial vehicles are not permitted to stage, and trying to sort it out by phone.

Where does a chauffeur meet you at Fort Lauderdale (FLL)?

On the lower level. Broward County Aviation (opens in a new tab), which operates Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, states that pick-up locations are in designated areas on the lower-level arrivals curbside, and that Ground Transportation Booths in each terminal are staffed during peak arrival periods.

FLL has four terminals, and they are far enough apart that going to the wrong one is a real delay rather than a short walk. Your terminal is determined by your airline, so give dispatch your flight number when you book — the flight number resolves the terminal, the arrival time, and the delay tracking in one field.

The complication at FLL specifically is that the airport is in the middle of a large capital improvement programme, with construction affecting terminals and the arrivals curbs around them. Zone letters and staging areas have moved and will move again. That is exactly why this guide does not print a zone letter: a wrong zone in a saved guide is worse than no zone at all.

The reliable instruction is the durable one. Lower level, arrivals, near baggage claim for your terminal, and confirm with your chauffeur by phone once you have landed. Harmony Limo's FLL airport car service confirms the meeting point against the day's actual layout.

Where does a chauffeur meet you at Miami (MIA)?

At Level 1, by baggage claim. After you clear customs or collect your luggage, your chauffeur waits near baggage claim on the arrivals level holding a sign with your name.

Miami International Airport is organised into three terminals — North, Central and South — and they are colour-coded blue, yellow and red respectively. As at FLL, the terminal follows the airline, and it is worth knowing which one you are arriving into before you land, because MIA is large and the terminals are a genuine walk apart.

MIA is also the South Florida airport where meet-and-greet does the most work, because it handles the largest volume of international arrivals in the region. An international arrival adds an immigration queue and a customs hall of genuinely unpredictable length, and the passenger coming through it is usually the one least well placed to be coordinating a kerbside pickup by phone.

A pre-arranged MIA airport car service tracks the inbound flight and waits. The rideshare zones at MIA are separate, signed for app-based pickups, and are not where a chauffeured pickup happens.

Where does a chauffeur meet you at Palm Beach (PBI)?

On Level 1, at baggage claim — and at PBI the rule behind that is worth understanding, because it is stricter than at the other two.

Palm Beach International Airport (opens in a new tab) permits authorised for-hire ground transportation providers to operate only if they display an Airport Vehicle Decal, and only on a pre-arranged basis. The airport is explicit that arrangements for pre-arranged ground transportation must be made in advance of the passenger's arrival at the airport.

Read plainly, that means you cannot land at PBI and hire a limousine at the kerb. There is no rank. The vehicle has to have been booked before you got there, and the operator has to be one the airport has authorised.

This is a passenger-protection rule and it is worth knowing for a reason that has nothing to do with convenience: an operator working PBI without a decal is working outside the airport's authorisation, which tells you something about how they handle the rest of their obligations. If you want to check an operator more thoroughly, see how to verify a limo company is licensed and insured in Florida.

Ground Transportation is on Level 1 at baggage claim. Rideshare, by contrast, picks up on the outer curb of Level 3, the departures level — a genuinely counterintuitive arrangement, and a common source of confusion at PBI.

What about Boca Raton Airport and Ocean Reef Club?

Both are private-aviation arrivals, and both work completely differently from a commercial terminal: your chauffeur meets you at the fixed-base operator, on the ramp side, rather than in a public hall.

Boca Raton Airport (BCT) is a general-aviation field a few minutes from central Boca Raton, and for a private arrival it is by far the shortest transfer in the region. Ocean Reef Club Airport is a private field in Key Largo serving club members and their guests, and it is roughly a two-hour run from Boca Raton.

The booking detail that matters for both is the FBO name. A private airfield can have more than one, they are on opposite sides of the field, and "meet me at the airport" does not resolve to a location. Give the FBO name and the tail number if you have it.

Harmony Limo covers all four airports it names — MIA, FLL, PBI and Ocean Reef Club — plus the local general-aviation fields, from a Boca Raton base.

What should you send your operator before you fly?

Four things, and the flight number is the one that does the most work.

Send the flight number, the number of passengers, the number of bags, and your destination address. The flight number alone gives dispatch the airline, the terminal, the scheduled arrival, and — critically — the live status, so a delay is handled without you doing anything. Sending only "landing around 4pm" throws away every one of those.

Add whether you want meet-and-greet or curbside, and flag anything that changes the vehicle: a child seat requirement, oversized luggage, a wheelchair, or a passenger who cannot manage a long walk to a kerb.

Then do one thing after you land: switch your phone off airplane mode before you reach baggage claim. Almost every pickup that goes wrong at a South Florida airport goes wrong because the passenger is unreachable for the twenty minutes when reaching them mattered.