Private chauffeur and discreet security on the French Riviera

Let me start with the counter-argument, because it’s honest: over much of the Riviera you can do perfectly well without a driver. If you’re staying in Cannes and dining in Cannes, a car is an encumbrance. I say so to clients, and I do sometimes cancel a booking.

That said, there are four situations where the opposite is true, and where the absence of a driver ruins a whole day.

• The hilltop villages and the hinterland. Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Èze, Gourdon, Ramatuelle: parking is scarce and tiresome. You drive the beautiful road, the car is taken away, and you have lunch without thinking about it.
• Dinners. The most obvious and frequent use: nobody should be driving the peninsula roads at two in the morning, and the question doesn’t even arise when the evening stretches.
• Airport transfers in high season. Nice–Saint-Tropez in August, with luggage and children, in an unfamiliar hire car, is an experience you happily forgo.
• Multi-stop days. Vineyards in the morning, lunch elsewhere, beach in the afternoon: that’s where a driver who knows the region saves two hours in a day, simply by knowing which way to go.

Not the car. Everyone has the car. What separates a good driver is that he knows the region and not just the GPS: he knows what time the Pampelonne road jams, where to park near an address that has no parking, and how to get out of Cannes on a Festival night.

Then discretion. A good driver hears nothing, repeats nothing, and makes himself invisible while you have lunch. It’s a skill, and rarer than people think.

Finally, consistency: the same driver all week rather than a new one each day. After two days he knows your habits, the time you’re actually ready (never the one you announced) and the child seat is already fitted.

This is a subject to be precise about, because it’s often misunderstood. In the vast majority of cases, my clients don’t need bodyguards. They need three much simpler things, which suffice.

• Discretion of movement. Not announcing where you’re going, not posting in real time, not leaving a villa empty and lit with nobody passing by.
• A trained driver, which is not the same as a guard. He knows where to position himself, doesn’t leave the car unattended and knows the exits.
• Managing valuables: a safe at the villa, jewellery that doesn’t sleep in a hotel room, bags that don’t stay on a beach while you swim. Nearly every bad story I know on this coast comes down to that, and nothing else.

Proper close protection exists, can be put in place and is justified in certain cases: an exposed public figure, a public event, a particular context. It’s prepared in advance, it’s regulated, and it isn’t improvised the day before. When a client asks for it, my first question is always: what precisely worries you? The answer determines everything, and often leads to a lighter arrangement than was envisaged.