Hiring a Driver with a 13-Passenger Van for 5 days

This is one result of a search for '13 passenger van & driver in Ireland'

https://www.1cares.com/ie/en/services/rent-a-van.html

The rental price of van with driver in Ireland depends on several key variables including mileage, service hours, van model and some other variables. That said, we can provide you with an example of price: € 627. This is an average price to hire a van with driver in Ireland with a capacity 16 pax for 8 hours of service with the included mileage of 80 kilometers. However, each situation is unique and the price can well be lower or higher depending on your programme and our availabilities. Therefore, please send us your request and we will provide you with your exact quote in Ireland.

No personal experience, but gives you a baseline for cost

good luck

Using joe’s example for 8 people, which works out to about $78 per person for an 8- hour day, that extrapolates to $1,018 per day for 13 people in the van. And that’s traveling only about 50 miles in a day.

By comparison, our driver on Inishmore, the big island off the west coast of Ireland, charged €20 per person for a tour in his van, which lasted maybe 6 hours, but didn’t cover that many miles, as the island isn’t that big. And that was just for one day, and there wasn’t any luggage.

Do you have a road itinerary in mind, diane? Would your group be starting in Dublin, where more chauffeur options might exist, or elsewhere? Where do you want to go, and where will it end?

This is incredibly helpful, thank you. We originally planned to rent 3-4 cars, but not everyone is comfortable driving, so now I’m exploring more affordable alternatives. Maybe I find daily services from one location to the next? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Our current itinerary is as follows:

Saturday, April 12: Depart Dublin and travel to the Cliffs of Moher (overnight stay).
Sunday: Travel to Dingle (overnight stay).
Monday: Travel to the Ring of Kerry and visit the Blarney Stone (overnight near Millstreet to visit family).
Tuesday: Visit Cork and return to Dublin.

We were looking at a family trip to Ireland pre-Covid with 15 people. We were going to use Butlerstours.com. You can arrange an itinerary with them.

You know, when you rent a 55-passenger bus with driver in the US, they construct a quote using things like:

Loaded miles
Empty miles
Loaded hours
Unloaded hours
Idle hours
Hotel room
Food allowance

I haven't done this in Ireland (but I can easily see why it is a good idea.) You may need to adjust your perspective. This is not like taking a 4-passenger Uber home from a bar after work. It's a complex service in a specific higher-cost vehicle. And you have to consider the value (and level of "certainty") between ONE vendor and multiple-vendors in each location. It is not uncommon in Europe to see a "Rental Car Shuttle Van" (vehicle size) with a trailer to hold luggage. But that greatly affects parking and navigation options.

I would point out that there is a big difference between 9 passengers and more than 9-passengers, especially with luggage to consider.

Hi Tom,

I completely agree—having door-to-door service allows everyone to enjoy the beautiful scenery that the drivers would otherwise miss if we self-drive. Plus, there are plenty of other perks.
I’ve already reached out to a few places for quotes. If it ends up being out of our price range, we can always rent a few larger vehicles as a backup plan.

Be aware that driving large vehicles could be difficult on those narrow roads with walls close to the road and sheep in the road.

What you're looking for sounds less like a van and driver and more of a custom tour. I would suggest you search this site and the wider web for tour operators.
Also, with such a large group, short amount of time and desire to visit family, I would consider staying near your family and doing day trips from there. This gives folks options in case they're not interested in, for an excellent example, Blarney.

Whether this helps, or would complicate things, there are bus services that might be worth. investigating. This wouldn’t be private or custom, but if timetables and prices made a difference, you could potentially take public buses (coaches) to some places, and a hired service to others.

In 2018, we landed at the Dublin airport and immediately got on a bus bound for Galway. I think it was CitiLink, but there are other bus lines, too. It passed thru Dublin enroute, so we got a mini tour of downtown Dublin sights, and some people got off in Dublin, and other passengers got on, so you could take the bus from Dublin itself, as well as the airport. Maybe cheaper than a private transport, at least for this leg.

Once you reached Galway, you could organize getting to the Cliffs of Moher. We stayed in nearby Lisdoonvarna, a really cool town.

We went to the Blarney Castle, and although I took a photo of the Blarney Stone from the ground, way down below it, the stone wasn’t the reason for going there. Climbing inside the castle remnants, and seeing the magnificent gardens were the highlights. There’s a little cave at the base of it, too.

In Cork, touring the English Market (and lunch in the restaurant upstairs), the Butter Museum (Kerrygold has quite a significant history), and the Crawford Art Gallery museum were other favorites, besides Blarney Castle. Then there’s trad music, with a pint of Murphy’s stout.

Good idea, I will look into that. I have also reached out to someone I know in Ireland for suggests.

That's a lot of people to plan for!

What about dividing your time between Dublin and Galway and taking day tours from there? Some companies offer small group tours or will customize for you from those cities. Take train or bus to travel between cities and spend several nights in one hotel. Much more economical than hiring driver and van and less hassle with luggage daily.
From Galway: Cliffs of Moher, Aran Islands and Connemara are 3 options.
Here is one company of many in Galway: https://wildatlanticwaydaytours.com/private-bespoke-tours/
From Dublin one possibility: https://wildrovertours.com/day-tours/ You could take a tour all the way to Belfast or to the Wicklow Mountains.

Another option might be Rabbie's Tour company. We had a great experience with them doing one of their regular tours, but they also have an option to create your own itinerary. They use the sort of van that would nicely accommodate your size of group. Might be worth a look.