Telus gets into the holiday spirit, offers free taxi rides all week across Canada

Telus is providing free taxi services in various cities across Canada up until—and including—Christmas Day.

Some of the major cities involved include Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Toronto, and Montreal. Quoth The Province:

The cars will have a picture of a frog on them with the words “hop in.”

For no charge, the vehicles will provide transportation for a limited number of hours during the day, and a free phone call to anywhere in North America during the ride.

The hours of operation will be between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.

“Telus is all about giving where we live and community,” Anne-Marie LaBerge, vice-president of marketing for Telus. She knows Christmas time causes chaos. “I personally was stuck downtown (in Montreal) last week — couldn’t find parking, couldn’t find a taxi,” she said.

Telus won’t disclose the cost of this altruistic promotion, but believes it will get much more positive publicity from these taxi rides for its dollar than what could be achieved in a typical public-relations campaign.

Although the Telus taxi promotion includes most bigger cities in Canada, some of the ones left out include Ottawa, Winnipeg, Quebec City and Halifax. LaBerge said she hopes the campaign is expanded to other areas in future years. She said some cities aren’t getting the taxis this time around because there was not enough time to make arrangements for the cabs.

“We tried to get as many cities as we could. This idea was born, literally, 14 days ago,” Anne-Marie said.