About Ensom Travel — Your Local Tayside Airport Transfer Service.

Ensom Travel started in 2018 when Richard Brough had run enough airport transfers for other people's firms to know the Tayside market needed its own. The early-morning Edinburgh runs, the late-night Glasgow returns, the offshore-trade Aberdeen rotations — all of them were being served by Dundee taxi firms that subcontracted out, by Glasgow chauffeur companies that dispatched late from Cumbernauld, or by a rotation of one-man-bands without a reliable pricing model. The gap was a fixed-price, premium-vehicle, locally-driven service that took the booking and ran the job with the same person on each end of the call.

The fleet started with one Mercedes — chosen for room (seven seats with full luggage), comfort (premium standard for both family travel and corporate work), and reliability on the Tayside roads. The pricing model started as fixed-quote-before-booking — no surge multipliers, no card-machine fees, no waiting-time supplements when an inbound flight delayed. The booking process started with a single phone number that Richard answers himself, and the service area started as Broughty Ferry, Dundee and the immediate Tayside towns.

Six years on, the shape has stayed the same. Same Mercedes (now a current Mercedes GLE), same fixed-price quotes, same single number, same Broughty Ferry base. The route map has filled out — St Andrews, Perth, the wider Perthshire pickups have all been added as the corporate work and golf-tour bookings asked for them. The customer pattern is two-thirds Tayside locals booking the same airport runs the same way they did in 2019, and one-third tour-group and corporate work routed through Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Title: Founder and driver, Ensom Travel
Based: Broughty Ferry, Dundee
Driving experience: 8 years on Tayside-to-airport routes

Richard Brough founded Ensom Travel in 2018 after seven years driving for other Tayside private hire firms. The early-morning Edinburgh runs were where he built the route knowledge — which lay-by on the A90 has 4G to confirm a delayed flight, which slip road off the Queensferry Crossing moves fastest at 5am, where the cones go up on the airport approach during Edinburgh Festival. The Aberdeen and Glasgow routes followed. The corporate work and the St Andrews golf-tour bookings filled in over the years that followed.

The Ensom model — fixed-price quotes, single-driver service, Mercedes-standard fleet, flight-tracked pickups — is the one Richard kept asking for as a passenger himself before he started running it for other people. Local, family-run, no third-party shuffle, no app, no surge pricing.

The driver who answers your call is the driver who picks you up. Every time.

The fleet is a single Mercedes GLE SUV. Three rows of seats — seven passengers with full luggage, kept to executive standard for both family work and the corporate bookings. Child seats fitted on request, golf-bag room standard for the St Andrews tour-group runs, full boot for the four-week offshore-rotation bags.

The GLE was chosen for three reasons: passenger room (a saloon was not enough for a family of five with cases and clubs), ride comfort (premium standard for the early-morning long-haul departures and the late-night returns), and reliability on the Tayside winter roads (the A90 in December and the M80 in January reward four-wheel drive). The vehicle is replaced on a five-year cycle to keep the fleet at current-generation specification.

For bookings of more than seven passengers — large tour groups, wedding parties, corporate event arrivals — a second vehicle is arranged on the day. Mention the group size on the quote.

The Ensom Travel service area covers Dundee, the wider Tayside region, and the North Fife area as far south as St Andrews. The core coverage map:

Dundee: Broughty Ferry, City Centre, West End, Barnhill, Douglas, Fintry, Whitfield, Hilltown, Strathmartine, Coldside, Lochee, Ardler, Camperdown.

Tayside towns: Monifieth, Carnoustie, Arbroath, Forfar, Kirriemuir, Brechin, Montrose, Blairgowrie, Coupar Angus.

Perthshire: Perth, Scone, Bridge of Earn, Crieff, Auchterarder, Methven.

North Fife: Newport-on-Tay, Tayport, Wormit, Cupar, St Andrews and the East Neuk villages.

Town-by-town pickup timing notes are on the Service Areas page along with the standard A90, M90, M80 and Tay-Bridge journey times to each airport.

Ensom Travel operates as a Dundee City Council-licensed private hire business. The Mercedes GLE carries full hire and reward insurance, public liability cover, and is subject to the standard Dundee City Council MOT and inspection schedule for private hire vehicles.

The single-driver model means accountability is direct — there is no dispatch handler, no third-party app, no rotation of unknown drivers. The person who quotes the run drives the run. Bookings can be confirmed, changed and queried directly with Richard.

We are currently best contacted by phone (07426 395551), email (info@ensomtravel.co.uk) or the contact form. A Google Business Profile listing is in progress — once live, reviews and Google Maps directions will be linked from this page.