About Group Trips
A group trip or group booking consists of clients traveling to or from a common location with a common request time.
Clients in a group may travel together on a single vehicle or they may travel on different vehicles. These clients, for example, may have a common destination but not a common origin and they may not be scheduled together on the same run. Once groups are created and clients are assigned to them, you can start booking trips for the group.
About Exclusive Groups
If you want to keep other passengers from riding with your group, you can create an exclusive group booking.
When you schedule an exclusive group booking, the members of the group are scheduled together on the same vehicle and no one outside the group can ride with them. Exclusive group bookings do not allow non-group passengers to ride with them between the first pick-up and last drop-off belonging to the group. Non-group passengers can be scheduled on the same vehicle before and after the exclusive group’s booking
The exclusive group feature is enforced at all times, not just during a batch. If it is violated (for example, a non-group member is scheduled during an exclusive group’s booking), an MG (Mixed Group) violation occurs.
When batch scheduling template trips for exclusive group purposes, the group optimizer feature attempts to optimally squeeze an entire group into one vehicle or if they cannot all fit into one vehicle, place the group into as few vehicles as possible. When using the Schedule Booking Wizard to schedule your exclusive group trip, the group optimizer is not available but the Schedule Booking Wizard will not schedule a non-group passenger to a run with an exclusive group in it.
If you create a booking for a group with only one client in it and select the Exc. Grp check box, that client is treated as an exclusive group. The passenger is scheduled without any other clients on board and no other bookings are scheduled on the same vehicle between the passenger's pick-up and drop-off times.