A delegate transport plan is four documents, not one: a manifest, a wave schedule, a marshalling brief and a contingency section. Most plans that fail have the first and skip the other three. Below is the structure, with every field named, ready to copy into a spreadsheet.
No figures are filled in. Vehicle capacities, drive times and rates must come from your own operator quotes against your own dates - anyone handing you a Fiji transport plan with the numbers already in it is guessing.
1. The manifest
One row per person, one master copy, one named owner and one named deputy. The commonest failure in group transport is three slightly different spreadsheets held by the planner, the DMC and the hotel.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Delegate name | As it appears on the ticket |
| Group / company / cohort | Drives who travels together |
| Inbound flight number and scheduled arrival | Local time |
| Outbound flight number and scheduled departure | Local time |
| Destination property | And room-block reference |
| Assigned arrival wave | Filled from section 2 |
| Assigned departure wave | Filled from section 2 |
| Mobility, medical or accessibility needs | Determines vehicle type |
| Accompanying persons / children | Affects seat count, not headcount |
| Mobile number and WhatsApp | The only channel that works on arrival |
| VIP or speaker flag | Determines whether a car is required |
| Emergency contact | Duty-of-care requirement |
Add a separate tab for crew and suppliers - AV technicians, speakers, photographers, stylists. They arrive on different schedules and frequently need vehicles at hours when no delegate wave runs.
Set a change cut-off: the date after which the manifest is frozen and only exceptions are handled by phone.
2. The wave schedule
Sort the manifest by scheduled arrival, then group delegates into windows wide enough to fill a vehicle and narrow enough that nobody waits too long. Each wave gets a fixed departure time, a named vehicle and a hold time.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Wave ID | W1, W2, W3 |
| Window covered | Flights landing between X and Y |
| Delegate count and seat count | Seats, not people |
| Vehicle type and operator | Coach, minibus, car, boat |
| Marshalling point | Exact location |
| Scheduled departure | Fixed, published to delegates |
| Hold time | How long the vehicle waits past departure before leaving |
| Overflow wave | Where missed delegates go |
| Arrival time at property | From the operator's quote, not an estimate |
| Wave lead | Named person travelling with it |
The hold time is the field most plans omit and the one that decides whether a schedule survives first contact. Without it, one delayed delegate holds fifty.
For island legs, add a column for tide, sea state and last sailing, because a boat transfer has a hard cut-off a coach does not. Operators such as SeaFiji and the Mamanuca and Yasawa boat services work to fixed daily windows; get the last departure in writing and work backwards from it.
3. The marshalling brief
This is the one-page document your ground staff actually hold. Delegates coming off a long-haul flight will follow the first branded sign they see, so the brief has to be unambiguous.
- Meeting point, described physically as a delegate would find it, not by an internal name
- Signage wording - the exact words on the board, matching what delegates were told
- Staff positions and how many, including one person inside the arrivals hall and one at the vehicle
- The script - what staff say, including the confirmation question that checks a delegate is on the right wave
- The checklist staff tick as each delegate boards
- Escalation number, staffed, with a named person answering it
- What to do with an unlisted arrival - the decision, in advance
Brief the operator's drivers on the same document. Tourist Transport Fiji, TEWAKA Fiji, Pacific Transport Limited, Airport Shuttle Fiji, Coral Coast Transfers and Epic Transfer & Tours Fiji all run group work; confirm whose staff will be standing where, because a shared assumption is not a plan.
4. Contingency
Each row needs a trigger, an action, a decision-maker and a cost owner. Vague commitments to flexibility are not contingency.
| Trigger | Action | Decision-maker | Cost owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inbound flight delayed beyond the hold time | Delegates move to overflow wave; vehicle departs | Wave lead | |
| Inbound flight diverted or cancelled | Accommodation and re-transfer arranged | Planner | |
| Boat transfer cancelled for weather | Land-based alternative or overnight hold | Planner with operator | |
| Vehicle breakdown | Replacement vehicle ETA and interim shelter | Operator | |
| Road closure or flooding | Alternative route and revised arrival time | Operator | |
| Delegate unaccounted for at hold time | Escalation call sequence begins | Marshalling lead | |
| Weather event affecting the programme | Programme-level decision | Client with planner |
Leave the cost-owner column blank in the template and fill it during contracting. Settling who pays for a replacement coach before the event is considerably easier than settling it afterwards.
Before you issue it
Walk the plan through with the operator and the venue in one conversation, out loud, wave by wave. Most errors surface in the first five minutes of that call - a wave arriving before check-in opens, two waves assigned the same vehicle, a boat leg scheduled after the last sailing.
Then pair it with the conference run sheet template so the transport plan and the programme share one set of times, read how to move 300 delegates from Nadi airport for the scale version, and check your assumptions against real Fiji transfer times. The wider framework is in the Fiji business events guide.