Transport: Coach Industry - Fun or Trouble?

Benjamin Franklin once quipped, “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” Of course, we know none of the Founding Fathers ever had the opportunity to ride on a modern motorcoach. But Franklin’s advice offers timeless wisdom to everyone in the bus, tour and travel industry. For it’s the changing world in which the bus business finds itself today that proves Franklin prescient. Any business must always evolve to adapt to changing market conditions&mdash...

It is a well-known fact that most holiday makers and businessmen do not enjoy the travelling part of the trips they make. If people were able to snap their fingers in order to be automatically transferred to their destination, then most would. However, we are stuck with relying on various modes of transport to get us from A to B. A UK research from the beginning of the year shed light on which of these particular modes are the least stressful and allow passengers to arrive at their destinations ...

The European Commission recently adopted two legislative proposals establishing sets of rights for passengers using bus and maritime services on both domestic and international routes. Rights include minimum rules on information for all passengers before and during their journey, assistance and compensation in the event of interruptions of journeys, measures in the event of delays and specific assistance for persons with reduced mobility. Like in the air and rail sectors, proposals foresee indep...

Perhaps most people's perception of coach holidays involves a group of elderly and sometimes immobile travelers visiting a seaside resort on an old bus style coach. While there are certainly a diverse range of demographics in the coach travel sector, this archaic image simply does not hold true any more. Other forms of coach travel may include students on the cheap or hoards of school children. This again may be the case but coach travel no longer belongs just to these exclusive groups. Nowad...

The demand for UK coach travel holidays is set to rise by 23% to be worth an estimated £2.93 billion by 2011, with demand for holidays overseas likely to fuel the rise, according to research specialists Mintel in their bi-annual Coach holidays, Leisure Intelligence report. The total number of passengers carried in 2006 was 8.2 million and that figure is expected to rise to 8.8 million in four years time, but only if coach operators can respond to a change in the market. Like most domest...