profile: Belgraves
A cleaner, brighter future undoubtedly excellent – a QSi Gold Award winner in both 2018 and 2019. As with many of us, the pandemic took Jason by surprise. He’d just bought a new Range Rover P400 plug-in hybrid, and was poised to upgrade NE OF THE IRONIES OF THE COVID PANDEMIC HAS BEEN the business’ premises from a home office to new commercial premises. the fact that the companies with the highest standards were “We’d put in an offer on an office, but fortunately we managed to withdraw often the hardest hit. it when this kicked off,” he says. “We managed to get payment holidays on Private hire and taxi fleets could still pick up work such our vehicles too – including nine months on the Range Rover.” as transporting essential workers, and some of the more go-ahead firms Thereafter it was a case of keeping the overheads down through 2020, opened up new avenues into delivering food, pharmaceuticals and other using the furlough scheme and waiting. “Coming into 2021, from January to products. March was very quiet,” he says. But these avenues were not open to chauffeur companies. With the From April, Jason says “we started seeing some green shoots”. This was best will in the world, local authorities were not going to pay S-class rates mainly a return of regular pre-pandemic customers, such as middle eastern to transport nurses to and from the wards. And a luxury limousine is far harder to clean than a Prius if that lamb vindaloo spills on its carpeted floor. and Russian families that previously were regular visitors but who had simply not been travelling – even by private jet. As a result, most chauffeur companies – even the very best ones – “Some of the families we deal with started to come back in,” says Jason. had no option but to hunker down and hope for a return as soon as possible. That’s the reality that faced Jason Ipekdjian, owner of Belgraves of London, “We also won one large hotel account and we were upgraded on another but these didn’t start to deliver any work until July.” when the first lockdown was imposed in March 2020. And Belgraves is
Mark Bursa
O 16
NOVEMBER 2021
