You may remember that Kevin and I were very unhappy with the airport shuttle in Melbourne. Sadly Sydney was no better.
Kevin had a very early morning flight to Melbourne to connect up with his international flight. He was booked on the 5:10 shuttle. Much to his annoyance, the shuttle driver did not stop at the hotel but instead raced past. Fortunately the hotel staff were able to call and get him to come back. Kevin tells me that the driver berated him for not having been obviously waiting on the sidewalk.
Being forewarned, I planned to be where I needed to be for my pickup, but I still nearly missed the shuttle because he was 10 minutes early. He did actually come into the lobby and look for me, which is just as well. My bags were just being collected by the concierge and I was able to go immediately.
The driver then started demanding money from me. I showed him my hotel bill that clearly said I had paid for the shuttle pick-up. He said they should have given me a ticket. I said I wasn’t paying twice. Eventually I wrote a note to the hotel to say the driver had picked me up and needed some sort of documentation to say that I had paid. This seemed to satisfy him.
As we continued around the city it because obvious that the driver, a middle-aged Chinese guy, was under serious time constraints. He rushed everywhere. His standard practice was to roll past the hotel tooting his horn, and stop if anyone with bags waved at him. He seemed not to have any list of expected passengers. If no one was around he would stop, race into the hotel, yell something, and race back.
I got the impression that his schedule was very fluid and that the dispatcher could add stops at any time. This must have played havoc with the poor guy’s schedule.
On our way out of the city we experienced what could have been a scene out of The Windup Girl, with the Australian dispatcher berating the driver for not stopping at a hotel, and the driver swearing that he had and that there had been no one there.
In the end, despite the manic nature of the journey, it took over an hour to get me to the airport, compared to the advertised 45 minutes.
I was very unimpressed with the way the shuttle operation was run. It seemed very disorganized, and focused on maximizing the number of pick-ups rather than providing a service to passengers. There was no proper booking system.
Sydney does have an airport train. It is a bit more expensive than the shuttle, and our hotel was around 10 minutes walk through busy city-center streets from the nearest station, but both of us would probably have been better off using the train. Had we been able to travel together the extra cost of a taxi would probably have been justified.
I had exactly the same thought as you while fuming over the shuttle: I’d rather have taken the train, even though it means I would have needed to walk a kilometer at 5 AM and pay more for it. While my shuttle was wandering around the streets of Sydney, I counted myself lucky that I’d given myself as much extra time as I could for my flight. As it happens, I had about twenty minutes spare. (I’m not impressed by JetStar’s luggage-check-in efficiency.)
FWIW, the concierge screwed up by not giving you a ticket for the shuttle. He did give me one, but must have forgotten to give you yours, and I wasn’t paying attention at the time.
Sorry you had shuttle problems, but I am not surprised by anything in your description. Jean and I gave up on shuttles at Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney in favour of an (expensive) taxi, although we have used the Sydney and Brisbane trains a few times, when the hotel were close to a station. Some hotel exclusive shuttles have been excellent (Brisbane Airport Novatel shuttle). Of course, at Townsville we always need to use a taxi.