A fair rate for the job. But what is that? I don’t know, and neither does my more successful and savvy friend who runs a coach business 50 miles away.
Pricing used to be an exact-ish science involving fixed costs, fuel, mileage, wages, how busy you are on the day, and, dare I say it, a touch of profit. Now it is more a case of pick a number, multiply it by three, double it, add a bit more for your inconvenience and then send it to the customer, hoping that you won’t get the job because you are far too busy to do it anyway!
The area where we have complete control of our pricing is our own holiday programme. It has been, and continues to be, one of the most profitable arms of the business, fuel aside (and you can build that in if you know your other costs). There generally are no hidden outgoings.
An operator can even tinker with the break-even point for seats sold, depending on how confident in a certain holiday it feels. Moving forward, and with higher interest rates, and Brexit making foreign travel more difficult, I see the UK holiday market as a growing part of the business.
So it was with interest that I read a statement from Touromo, saying that parent National Express is pulling out of coach holidays and day trips as it restructures and refocuses its business. Despite having bought family coach operators, which to my knowledge ran successful holiday programmes, it has not taken National Express long to decide to exit that market.
I do not get many questions right on University Challenge, but as a starter for 10 I can tell you which executive it was (and where they worked) who described family-run coach operators as “small, disparate concerns.”
The implication was there for all to see. We are backward-looking and behind the times. While we may run clean and tidy coaches, we have no idea about advertising, market trends and all the other clever stuff needed to run a successful business. It is as insulting now as it was then.
The family-run coach companies I know embrace technology. We have digital booking systems, spreadsheets that tell us which holidays may need a push. We hardly ever advertise in the local press. We know exactly where to target the advertising spend and what gets us the best value.
Our vehicles are new and bought specifically with tours in mind. The holiday programme is carefully planned to earn revenue during quieter times while leaving us plenty of capacity for other work in June and July.
Sometimes, we can be guilty of dismissing ourselves and our business as being just another family firm. I would bet good money that if you looked at a coach holiday brochure from even 2018 and compared it to this year’s, you would be amazed by how far the market has come and how different the two are. We have been through three website overhauls to drive new bookings.
Give yourself the credit for what you are, what you have achieved, and the businesses that you all run. If you are among the parc of small, disparate concerns, then perhaps it is something to be proud of, after all.
