Transportation, shows off one of his
company's vehicles
Company: All Occasion Transportation
Owner: Eric Weiner
Type of business: Luxury ground transportation
Location: 50 Kennedy Plaza, Providence
Employees: 31 full time, 15 part time
Annual revenue: Just under $2 million (2002)
It all started with a 1986 six-passenger, white limousine – and an interest in cars and transportation. That limousine was the first entrepreneurial vehicle that drove Eric Weiner to the top of a successful luxury ground transportation business.
Now, Weiner, president of All Occasion Transportation in Providence, has a fleet of 16 vehicles, more than 300 corporate accounts, affiliations with transportation companies in 450 cities and saw revenues grow 20 percent a year for eight straight years from 1990 to 1998.
And in March 2002, Limousine and Chauffeured Transportation magazine named the company “Operator of the Year” in the medium-fleet category.
“I didn’t really expect it to grow,” said Weiner. “I just wanted to have something interesting to do while I was in school.”
After his freshman year at Johnson & Wales University, Weiner sought a job driving limousines for the summer, but companies would not hire him because their insurance would not cover his young age. So Weiner did some research and found it would be easier to get insurance for a vehicle that he owned. He bought his first car in September 1990 – that white stretch limousine – and All Occasion was born.
By the time he graduated J&W in 1993, Weiner had three cars and was dedicated to his business full time.
Now, All Occasion has a total of 35 drivers (20 full time and 15 part time), nine office people, two garage workers and a fleet of limousines, sedans, executive vans, suburbans and luxury cruisers. The Providence office, located in the heart of downtown, serves as the main reservations and dispatch center – everything that is done locally, regionally, nationally and internationally goes through that nerve center.
The company’s vehicles are headquartered in a garage in Cranston.
All Occasion’s focus is on the corporate world. Corporate travelers make up more than 70 percent of the company’s customer base as local businesses are driven to and from airports, cities, conventions and meetings – mostly in the Northeast area.
Some of All Occasion’s more than 300 corporate accounts (clients that use the transportation company six or more times a month) include Amgen, Fleet, Providence Equity and Cookson America – the last one being the company’s first corporate account back in 1991.
After getting that first corporate account, Weiner realized the type of market that was available in the luxury transportation business. There were few limousine companies concentrating on corporate travel, most of the competition was and is focused on white limousines, weddings and proms, said Weiner. There are no white limousines in All Occasion’s fleet.
“Everything we have is all dark colors, really catering toward the corporate and business travel,” said Weiner, who recalled when his company once “tried to be everything to all customers,” and had black and white limousines and tried to specialize in both weddings and corporate travel. The target customer base became too large, said Weiner, so in the last few years he has focused his growth primarily on the corporate world and convention business – the latter of which tends to pick up this time of year.
“May and June is when we really kick off the convention business,” he said. “Newport is a very heavy market for us right now. This is the time of year when companies start having meetings and events there, so we’re doing a lot of transportation to and from the airports to Newport.”
And although the company has many Rhode Island customers, it also has clients outside the state who come into Rhode Island to do business – and the company also handles its clients’ travel needs around the country and the world. All Occasion has affiliations with many privately owned transportation businesses in 450 cities and the company is able to manage their clients’ travel needs through these other firms.
All Occasions’s company-owned vehicles are located in the Rhode Island area.
According to Weiner, his company was the first limousine business in Rhode Island to add sedans and town cars to its fleet and one of the only ones to offer suburbans, which, he said, are a popular way for executives to travel now.
But the most popular car, said Weiner, is the sedan – a Town Car or Grand Marquis.
All these vehicles are also pretty tech savvy as they are equipped with global positioning systems (GPS) so the location, speed and destination of the cars can be tracked. The cars also have digital cameras positioned behind the rearview mirrors “to maintain the highest level of safety,” said Weiner.
All Occasion has also catered to its share of celebrities – from Bob Hope to Larry King to Martha Stewart to Lisa Marie Presley and even the heavy metal band KISS.
Weiner recounted a memorable story concerning “Mr. Hope.”
Back when Weiner was chauffeuring, Hope was coming to town as the commencement speaker for the University of Rhode Island. All Occasion ended up driving Hope and his wife around for the weekend.
As Weiner was driving the couple back to T.F. Green Airport on Sunday afternoon, Hope was hungry and wanted to stop at a Wendy’s on Post Road in Warwick. Weiner obliged and went into the restaurant to get the couple’s hamburgers.
As Weiner waited for the food at the counter, Hope wandered into the restaurant, delighting many of the diners.
Hope simply needed to use the restroom.
Weiner still smiles at the story today.
“It was really a neat experience to hang out with Bob Hope for the weekend,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of famous, high-profile people, but our goal and concept has always been that every one of our customers is treated like a celebrity.”
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