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New company offering designated driver service in Las Vegas

Date Posted: Thu, May 5 2011, Las Vegas Sun - Las Vegas, NV
By Kyle Hansen
Thursday, May 5, 2011 | 2:05 a.m.

If you want to party it up but don’t have a designated driver, there is now another option to get home safely.

A new company, BeMyDD, as in Be My Designated Driver, began operating in Las Vegas last weekend. The company allows members to call and get a ride home, in their own car, for a charge.

The advantage of the service is that people don’t have to leave their cars behind, as they would if they took a cab or got a ride from someone else.

“You have the luxury of a chauffeur but at an affordable rate in your own car,” said cofounder Alexa Milkovich.

The service is almost identical to another company, Designated Drivers Inc., which has been operating in the valley since 1998 and has seen a huge decrease in ridership in the past two years.

BeMyDD started in Ohio a year ago, the brainchild of two college students who liked to have a good time and were looking for a successful business model. “We wanted a service like this when we were going home on breaks,” Milkovich said.

The business has quickly spread to 14 states, usually with 40 to 50 drivers in a specific metro area to start.

The owners figure Las Vegas should be a great place for the service, because alcohol is always readily available. “It’s always nice to have a designated driver, especially in a place like that,” Milkovich said.

Plus, since the company operates in a number of states and expects to soon expand to California, they figure clients visiting Las Vegas from out of town will be able to use the service here.

The company requires customers to pay an annual $25 membership fee. A pickup is $25 plus a mileage fee, or customers can schedule a ride in advance for about $15 an hour.

The pickup service is similar to the one offered by Designated Drivers, which charges a higher base fee but less for mileage and doesn’t have an annual membership fee.

BeMyDD is pushing the scheduled service, encouraging people to plan ahead for an evening out. The service can also be used by people who might need a ride home from a medical procedure, seniors who can no longer drive on their own or travelers who need a ride to the airport.

Milkovich said scheduled rides have been popular in other areas, with people reserving a driver for the night to take them out, wait in the car to take them to their next destination and get them safely home.

Billie Smith, the CEO of Designated Drivers Inc., said he thinks any service that gets drunken drivers off the road is good, but he’s not sure there is enough demand to support two companies offering the same service.

Designated Drivers has seen its ridership drop from about 800 per month to about 200, thanks to the Great Recession.

The company has also cut back on free rides for holidays because of reduced funding from state programs and private donations that footed the bill, Smith said. There won’t be any free rides this year for Cinco de Mayo.

Milkovich, however, said she thinks BeMyDD will be successful in Las Vegas. It has already seen success in other areas that have competing options, such as public transportation, she said.