According to the annual global taxi survey conducted by Hotels.com, London taxis have been voted the best in the world for the sixth year in a row. The survey shows that London managed to secure 22% of the votes, which is a clear lead over the second in list New York City, which secured 10% of the votes. Tokyo came in third in the survey by securing 9% of the votes.
In fact, it is good to see that London’s iconic black cabs managed to win nearly a quarter of the votes of the survey. Berlin also managed to reclaim its position in the top five list by securing the fourth place with 5% of the votes while the fifth place was a tie between Madrid, Amsterdam and Mexico City which managed to secure 4% votes each.
Different Categories
Taxis from 30 countries were surveyed wherein London managed to top the list in 5 of the 7 categories of the survey. These categories and the respective maximum votes London cabs secured were cleanliness with 23%, knowledge of the area with 27%, quality of driving with 30%, friendliness with 23% and safety with 25%.
Though the cabs in London managed to secure 23% of the votes in the friendliness category, this category was deemed the least important to travelers as some of London’s friendly cabbies in fact put off passengers. However safety was the priority for travelers.
New York City Cabs
While Bangkok and New York City taxis tied in terms of value for money by securing 20% votes each, it is rather interesting that the New York cabs did not make the overall top five this year.
However the famous yellow cabs of New York did grab the top spot for availability at 23% and will most likely maintain this ranking in the coming years because of the many thousands of new green-colored taxis that have been introduced across New York City’s boroughs.
Obscure Objects Left Behind in Cabs
Besides revealing the best taxis in the world, the global Hotels.com taxi survey also revealed some of the most obscure objects travelers had admitted to leaving behind in cabs. These objects included a Rubik’s cube left in an Italian taxi, dentures left behind in a taxi in Germany, a wig and a bird in a cage that was left behind in a US cab, a trombone that was found in a Finnish taxi and a prosthetic leg and an ex-boyfriend left behind in Australian cabs!
The survey also revealed that most of the people travelling in taxis tend to text or email while in a cab (about 19%). Sleeping followed as the second most popular activity with 15% of the travelers sleeping in cabs. This was followed by 10% of travelers eating and 9% kissing in cabs.
More Taxi Findings
The other global findings revealed by the survey include:
1. Most of the passengers (38%) have a tendency of rounding up the taxi fare to the nearest whole dollar while tipping or rather, tip 10% of their journey’s taxi fare.
2. To the UK travelers, the biggest pet peeve to them is when taxi drivers tend to take a longer route to reach their destination.
3. Most of the travelers, about 53% of them, prefer using a taxi as the mode of transportation from the airport to the hotel.
4. Passengers considered the most important feature a taxi should have was Wi-Fi (14%), and not the radio or music.