BY ROB SMENTEK
Limos4 COO Sasa Krstic (left) and Founder & CEO Vojkan Tasic
By all accounts, 2024 was a tremendous year for Limos4 CEO Vojkan Tasic. Not only did the company continue its growth as a valued partner for operators around the world, but in October, Tasic held the first Limos4 summit in Belgrade, Serbia, for the company’s partners and colleagues. This was followed by an announcement in November detailing a strategic partnership with German operation United Limousines. Needless to say, it’s an exciting time for Tasic, who entered the industry 15 years ago as a software developer.
“I come from an engineering background,” says Tasic. “I started in electrical engineering and got a Ph.D. in information systems from a very prestigious European university. But while I was getting my doctorate, I created a booking platform for a local limousine company in Zurich. The owner of that company said that the platform was great, but it caused problems in that he was receiving requests in English that he’d never gotten before. Since I was working on my Ph.D., I started to hire people who could help this one limousine company with answering services, logistics, etc. So then, in 2010, I proposed to that provider that he go worldwide. Thankfully, he said, no—and I proceeded to go off on my own.”
Cover Art: Limos4 Founder & CEO Vojkan Tasic (front left) and COO Sasa Krstic (front right) are backed by their executive team. Photography by Petar Tasic (fototasic.rs). Thus, Tasic found himself hooked by the chauffeured ground transportation industry, particularly its 24/7 nature in which so much can’t be predicted.
“I like the dynamics of the industry,” he says. “It’s never boring; there’s always something going on. You never know what’s going to land in your inbox or who’s going to call you. It’s literally never dull, especially when you’re in the business of events. It’s exciting and there are lots of changes ... and on top of that, you’re doing work for some of the most important people in the world.”
Though based in Switzerland, Tasic built Limos4 with the intent of being a ground transportation company with a worldwide presence.
“We’re an aggregator with more than 700 vetted partners,” says Tasic. “I like to say that Limos4 is not in the business of ground transportation but is in the business of quality assurance. We are one of the rare companies in the world that is capable of doing the vetting in person. We track all the documents and go through local regulations for each company to make sure they meet all the requirements for insurance and licensing. This is to ensure that our partners meet the standard for our clients. We have a full-time team of affiliate managers who travel around and vet our affiliates. That’s all they do all day long.”
But offering a worldwide service network is not without its challenges, particularly with the specific regulations and restrictions that come with operating in Europe.
Limos4 Founder and CEO Vojkan Tasic delivering a keynote at the inaugural Limos4 Annual Summit “In Europe, one big shortcoming is that it has so many languages and countries. It’s completely different than the US, as most states largely have the same regulations, and everybody speaks the same language. In Europe, there are more than 30 regulations that operators must follow on a weekly basis: insurance policies and requirements, legal requirements, and what you can do between cities. Even within one country there are lots of regulations. For example, you cannot go from Zurich and do business in Geneva—even though they’re both in Switzerland. Those are the dynamics of Europe, and that requires lots of overhead to be spent maintaining the level of service needed for this industry. It’s like running with weights on your legs, and you’re running against someone without weights,” says Tasic.
Intercontinental operations pose unique challenges, but Limos4 excels in using technology to overcome them. For a decade, Tasic and his team have developed an in-house software system that ranks among the most sophisticated in the industry.
“Without any exaggeration, I would say that it’s the most advanced software for limousine service companies out there. It offers many features that companies don’t have, so our internal software is a big part of our success and it’s also where our strategic benefit lies—our developer is just two doors from our operations team. Operations can knock on the door of development at any point and say that something’s not working or something new needs to be implemented. We have turnaround in hours—not even days—which is unheard of,” he says.
Though Limos4 in-house platform is not for sale—yet—the company does share it with its latest strategic partner, United Limousines.
“United Limousines President/CEO Michael Oldenburg and I spent a great deal of time during COVID brainstorming what we could do together. As a result, we joined forces in a very good way and signed a strategic partnership. This means that United Limousines will start using our software and have access to our reservations and dispatch teams. On the other side, Limos4 will have access to their extended fleet in German, which is one of the largest fleets in Europe overall. This will give us flexibility in the German market. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. Clients from United Limousines and Limos4 are very happy about this partnership,” says Tasic.
A panel discussion moderated by Sasa Krstic at the Limos4 Summit included (L to R) Alys Klouse of Crisis24, Lauren Keen of Principal Global Events, Jeff LaFave of HQ, and Roger Kershaw of Roger Kershaw Custom Travel Inc. Although Limos4 has about 700 partners in its network, Tasic sees their typical clients as belonging to three major categories.
“First and foremost, we work with medium to large US limo companies that don’t want to mess with smaller markets in Europe because they don’t know the regulations very well. While at the same time, they are aware of the risks they can be exposed to if they don’t do the work properly. That’s why they choose someone like us. Second is smaller to medium US enterprises that are traveling to Europe. For these clients, we cover their basic corporate transportation for them, whether it’s roadshows, airport transfers, or hourly services. Third is an area we’re growing a lot: event transportation. We handle events all over the world, and we have a special team that prepares things in the proper way, and they’re also planning upfront according to the standards of event management. We also send people on-site to be event coordinators so they can manage the event properly. These client partnerships are very important in our industry, and we need to let everyone do their job.”
As a way to celebrate Limos4’s partners, clients, and teammates, Tasic made the decision to host the recent summit to offer education, networking, and camaraderie.
The Limos4 team at the company’s inaugural summit in Belgrade, Serbia “Each year, we do an in-house teambuilding where we educate a bit and always have one day for fun, so this year we got the idea to invite the people who are most important to us. We have lots of friends in the media, and we have important clients who we wanted meet and discuss important topics. That’s how the idea was born. It was really amazing to have everyone there to exchange opinions and ideas,” says Tasic.
Among the guests at the event were Chauffeur Driven President Chris Weiss, along with a prestigious panel of corporate travel experts, including Alys Klouse of Crisis24, Lauren Keen of Principal Global Events, Jeff LaFave of HQ, and Roger Kershaw of Roger Kershaw Custom Travel Inc.
“From my point of view, it was the best panel I’ve seen in the ground transportation industry,” raves Tasic. “It was conducted by our COO Sasa Krstic with four guests: one from corporate transportation, a luxury travel agency, an event management company, and a risk management company. We had a perfect mix. We could see the widest spectrum about what people think of the company along with what is and is not important. Of course, we had a day of fun at a winery, we took a hike, and had a nice lunch with some local music.”
The event was held in Belgrade, Serbia, a locale that holds an important piece of trivia for our industry.
“Belgrade has the highest density of call centers for the limo industry in the world,” reveals Tasic.
The Limos4 team As he intends the summit to be an annual event, you can bet that plans are already afoot for 2025.
“Next year, we’re planning on doing a partner summit where we will invite suppliers, but it will be much larger.”
Tasic says that Limos4 has grown to a team of 35 people. While most staff belong to the reservation and delivery teams, they also have in-house design and marketing, and obviously software development.
“We run very lean, but we’re supported by lots of technology, which allows us to provide service toward our customers,” says Tasic.
The CEO is also quick to credit his executive team for the success of Limos4, namely COO Sasa Krstic, Head of Reservations Stefan Jevtic, and Head of Marketing Alexandra Tasic. And as 2024 was a banner year for Limos4, Tasic is excited by what’s coming in 2025.
“The next year will bring us lots of excitement, since we are also expanding our operations to the US. It’s not that we didn’t do work in the States before, but now we are formalizing it to local US entities and all the clients from Europe that travel to the US want to be supported in the proper way.”
Limos4 is also looking forward to sharing their proprietary software with outside companies.
“We are also working on new software, based on our current platform, that we can expand to a wider audience and our partners. We have so many requests from top clients—when they see the software, they want to have it as well. For the last five years, our answer has always been ‘sorry, it wasn’t built for anyone else.’ Next year, we will make the move so we can offer the software to our partners.”
However, as Limos4 expands and extends their service offerings, Tasic says that they will hold tight to the company’s three core tenets.
“We have three values in our organization. Our main value is integrity. We always say that we will not let anyone pierce our veil of integrity. We’re doing business with maximum honesty, and that’s our primary goal. We also pride ourselves on being clients first. We are in the upper-scale service level, and we simply must provide the best service for our customers. Our third value is innovation. We don’t care how things were done 20 years ago. We only care about innovation and what we can do better today and tomorrow. We’re doing everything we can to introduce innovation in our processes, whether it’s software or technology.” [CD1224]