Property services
Drivers
English-speaking, discreet, and known to us personally.
12 drivers on the network Lake Como
Distance means nothing here. The western shore road and the eastern lakeside road are the only through routes on their sides of the water, they are narrow, walled and tunnelled in long stretches, and when something blocks one there is nowhere to divert to. A works vehicle, a coach meeting a delivery lorry at a pinch point, a temporary light at a landslip: any of these turns a twenty-minute run into an hour, and the same trip takes a different length of time at nine in the morning, at two in the afternoon and on a Sunday in August. This is why an owner cannot plan a day here from a map. The competence being bought is knowing that today is a day to go early, or to go round by the motorway on the far side of the hill, or not to attempt it by road at all.
The vehicle is the next thing owners get wrong. A long saloon or a wide SUV looks correct at the airport and is a liability on the shore, where passing places are short, gateways are tight and the historic centres are closed to traffic altogether. Half the houses on this lake cannot be reached by car to the door, and of those that can, many are entered from a gate on a bend where stopping is genuinely dangerous. A driver who works the lake knows which house needs a smaller vehicle, where the car can wait without blocking a road, which jetty to meet a boat at when the road is impossible, and how luggage is going to get from the car to the house when there are forty steps between the two.
Then there is the part that is not driving at all. A driver kept for a stay is in the household's life: they know the ferry timetable better than the family does, they wait three hours outside a restaurant without complaint, they take a teenager to a tennis lesson and a grandmother to a hospital appointment, and they hear a great deal of private conversation in a quiet car. Private hire with a driver is a licensed activity in Italy, and we hold nobody on this page who cannot show that they are properly licensed and insured for what they are doing. Beyond that, the difference between a transfer company and a driver kept for the season is simply that the second one becomes part of how the house runs, which is why owners tend to keep the same person for years once they find them.
01What they actually do
Airport and city transfers
Malpensa, Linate, Lugano and Milan, with the timing worked backwards from the traffic on the day rather than from a fixed allowance.
Days at the disposal of the house
The car and the driver held for the day: restaurants, the school run, appointments, and the long wait outside that nobody thanks them for.
Knowing when not to take the shore road
Choosing the hour, the route over the hill, or the boat instead, and telling you before you have committed to a lunch on the other side.
Working with the boat
Meeting a launch at the right jetty, moving luggage between car and water, and covering the leg of the journey the boat cannot do.
02How we choose
We use them ourselves before we list them, on ordinary days as well as difficult ones, and we ask members afterwards. What we are testing is judgement: whether the driver said the shore road would be impossible at four o'clock, whether they proposed the jetty rather than the gate, whether they were where they said they would be when a flight landed early. English matters here, and so does the willingness to say nothing at all.
Nobody pays for a place on this list and we hold no commission on a booking, which is worth stating plainly in a trade where introduction fees are common and largely invisible to the passenger. Where we have arranged anything with a driver, it is a commitment to answer members at short notice in the season, not a rate we are paid to steer people towards.
We remove a driver for lateness, for a vehicle that has stopped being immaculate, for anything said about one client to another, and for the habit of subcontracting a booking to somebody we have never met without telling the member. The list is a list of people rather than of companies for exactly that reason.
Drivers: questions
How are private drivers on Lake Como charged?
Either as a fixed price for a defined transfer or as a rate for a day or half-day at the disposal of the house, with waiting time, tolls and any overnight away from base agreed in advance. We do not publish rates.
For a stay of any length the day arrangement is usually better value and always less stressful than booking transfers one by one. Agree what a day means: a start time, a finish time and what happens when dinner runs late. It is the only thing that ever causes friction.
Is a driver better than hiring a car on Lake Como?
For most people, yes. The roads are demanding, parking near the villages is scarce and controlled, and the historic centres are closed to traffic, so the car is rarely the pleasant part of the day.
A hire car earns its place if you are going to spend real time away from the shore: the passes, the Ghisallo, Bergamo, the Valtellina. For moving about the lake itself, the water is usually faster and always more agreeable, and a driver covers the legs the boat cannot.
How long is the transfer from Milan to the lake?
It varies enough by day, hour and season that we will not publish a figure. Ask the driver on the day, and build in the possibility that the last few kilometres take longer than the motorway did.
The motorway section is predictable; the shore road is not. A Friday afternoon in July and a Tuesday morning in March are different journeys entirely, and the closer the house is to the far end of a shore road, the wider the spread. Drivers who work the lake will tell you what time to leave rather than how long it takes.
Can a driver be kept for a whole stay?
Yes, and for longer stays or a season it is the usual arrangement: the same person, the same car, held for the household.
Settle hours, days off and where the car and driver are based when not needed, since a driver living an hour away is not on call in any meaningful sense. Families who come every summer commonly keep the same driver year after year, and book them before they book anything else.
By village
Other people worth knowing
Before you instruct anyone
For people who work on the lake
Are you the bestat what you do here?
The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.
Put yourself forward