Reselling Ground Transportation Services by OTAs in the UK and EU

A passenger books a transfer from Gatwick to central London through a major travel booking site while arranging flights and a hotel. The price looks competitive — noticeably cheaper than going direct. The booking confirms instantly. What she doesn't know: the Online Travel Agency (OTA) set the price, collected her payment, and passed the ride to a partner operator on a net rate. The operator holds a licence. The OTA does not. Nobody told her any of this, and she had no way to find out.

This is a routine transaction in the UK ground transfer market right now.

What OTAs Are Actually Doing — and Why the Distinction Matters

When an Online Travel Agency sells a flight, it passes the booking to an airline. The airline is the service provider; the OTA takes a commission. Ground transport reselling doesn't work this way.

When an OTA sells a transfer, it typically sets the price, selects the vehicle class, and lists the ride under its own product catalogue. The passenger pays the OTA. The OTA fulfils the booking through a partner operator or a platform like GetTransfer.com, keeping a margin on the transaction. That's not intermediation. That's selling a transport service — with all the legal consequences that follow.

The Evolving Legal Landscape: From the 2023 Ruling to the Court of Appeal

A High Court ruling in July 2023 appeared to draw the line explicitly. The Court declared that any operator accepting a private hire booking must do so as the principal contracting party. But that ruling did not settle the question. Delta Merseyside and Veezu challenged it successfully, and the Court of Appeal overturned the declaration in July 2024. As of early 2025, the case is before the Supreme Court and the legal position remains unresolved.

For OTAs, the outcome of this litigation matters significantly. If the principal contractor interpretation ultimately prevails, accepting a transfer booking would carry the full legal status of a transport provider. Under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, any company accepting private hire vehicle bookings as principal must hold an operator licence. An OTA selling transfers without the correct licence in place — its own or a verified partner's — could be operating outside the law.

VAT exposure follows a similar logic, though the position is contested. Where an OTA sets the price and collects payment, HMRC may treat it as the supplier of the service, making 20% VAT chargeable on the full fare. An OTA that doesn't account for this can price rides around 20% below a fully compliant operator — not because it's more efficient, but because it isn't paying what it owes. HMRC pursued this argument against Uber, securing significant back-payments, but the broader attempt to extend mandatory principal status — and therefore VAT liability on the full fare — to all private hire operators outside London was overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2024. Whether agency and intermediary models genuinely escape VAT on the full fare depends on how each arrangement is actually structured in practice.

What This Means if You're a Transport Operator Considering an OTA Partnership

The volume opportunity is real. A partner arrangement with a major OTA can generate consistent bookings that would take years to build through direct channels. That's a genuine commercial argument for the relationship.

But the structure of the arrangement determines who carries what obligation. Getting this wrong creates liability for operators, not just for the OTA at the top of the chain.

If the OTA acts as principal — setting prices, controlling the booking, collecting payment — the operator needs to verify the OTA holds the correct licences and accounts for VAT. If the OTA acts as a genuine agent, passing the booking to a licensed operator, the compliance responsibilities stay with the operator.

The commercial mechanics differ too. Agency arrangements mean the operator receives the full fare and pays the OTA a commission. Principal arrangements mean the OTA sets the retail price, keeps the margin, and pays the operator a net rate. These structures have different implications for pricing and regulatory responsibility. Conflating them, or leaving the question unanswered in a partner agreement, is where liability exposure tends to accumulate.

One honest note for smaller operators: the margins on net-rate OTA arrangements are often thin. If your routes are predictable and your direct booking pipeline is solid, the economics of OTA partnerships can be hard to justify against the compliance verification burden they introduce.

Consumer Protections

UK consumer protection law prohibits misleading commercial practices. Selling a transfer at a fixed price without including applicable VAT, or presenting a non-licensed service as fully compliant, can breach the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

OTA terms that disclaim all responsibility for the ride — positioning the platform as a mere intermediary — offer limited protection when courts treat it as the principal provider. The pattern of controlling booking and pricing while contractually shifting liability to the driver has not held up under regulatory scrutiny. Courts have said this consistently. Platforms that keep doing it are betting on not being tested.

For transfers sold as part of a package holiday, the Package Travel Regulations add another layer: the OTA carries direct responsibility for the quality and safety of each component, including the ground transfer.

The Competitive Distortion

The most consequential market-level problem is straightforward arithmetic. An OTA not remitting VAT can price rides 20% below a fully compliant operator. That gap doesn't reflect better service or operational efficiency. It reflects a decision not to follow the rules — and it penalises every licensed operator competing on the same routes.

Transport for London revoked Uber's operating licence in 2019 until the company met compliance standards. This process is driven by passenger safety failures rather than the principal contractor question. HMRC pursued VAT obligations against Uber specifically, with considerable success. But the attempt to extend that legal framework across the entire private hire sector has not followed a straight line: the Court of Appeal rejected the blanket application of principal contractor status outside London, and the question of how widely VAT obligations will ultimately reach remains before the courts. The regulatory direction is active and consequential, but it has not yet produced the settled, sector-wide outcome that some had anticipated.

For operators deciding which OTAs to work with, a partner's compliance record matters as much as its booking volume. An OTA that cuts corners on licensing or VAT doesn't absorb that risk alone — it distributes it through its entire partner network.

The model works when it's built correctly: verified licensing, transparent pricing that includes VAT, honest terms for passengers. Where those conditions aren't met, the exposure is real and the distortion runs through the whole market. Understanding how a reselling arrangement is actually structured — not how the OTA's sales deck describes it — is the most important question any operator or passenger can ask before the booking is confirmed.