On your marks, get set, stop! A story of survival for Seawards

Starting out on your own is always a great adventure. In North Yorkshire, with everything in place for the season ahead, Ian and Rachel Seaward were fully prepared and excited about the journey to come. The date? December 2019.

With just a few weeks to go until Christmas, the first brochure offering holidays for 2020 with new coach tour operator, Seawards of Harrogate, had arrived in homes throughout the area.

Ian Seaward smiles at the memory.

“We’d taken a chance,” he says. “My wife Rachel and I were well known in North Yorkshire as a husband and wife coach tour driving team. Circumstances had given us the opportunity to set up on our own, and the response to that first tour brochure had been really gratifying.”

Most coach tour operator start-ups tend to feature one or more people with a lengthy career in the industry. But in Ian’s case his background was in horticulture followed by a period running a pub in Harrogate.

“I had been really enjoying the work,” he says. “But by 2008 I was getting very concerned about how the recession was kicking in. I was looking around to see what else I could do. I’ve always liked driving and I began to wonder if being a coach driver might be for me. A chap in the pub mentioned that local tour operator Rondo Travel was looking for drivers. I decided to take my PCV test and became a part-time driver mostly covering feeder work.

“I really enjoyed that and soon found myself driving for Procters Coaches and Eddie Brown Tours. In 2014 I moved over to drive for H. Atkinson and Sons of Ingleby Arncliffe near Northallerton. In early 2018 I was headhunted by Deirdre Brown, formerly of Eddie Brown Tours, who had recently taken over Guiseley-based Kevin Jackson Travel. She was looking for a husband and wife team to work for Winns of Northallerton, the operator she hired-in from. We enjoyed the work but towards the end of 2019, with that work coming to an end, we decided to continue on our own. We took a leap of faith and started to create our own tour programme.”

First steps: a brochure and a coach

Ian recalls the planning that took place to launch their first holiday brochure.

“I wanted to take things steady,” he explains. “My aim was to put together a brochure featuring six domestic tours. I spoke with a number of tour wholesalers, eventually taking late availability that wholesalers had on hold. At the same time I was looking around for a coach. Fortunately, Martin and David Atkinson, of Atkinson’s Coaches, who I had worked for previously, offered to sell me their 10-plate 48-seat Van Hool Astron. The vehicle had started life with Parrys International, moving to Winns and then Atkinsons. It had been really looked after and, with an on-board servery and fitted out to a high specification, was exactly what we wanted. Martin and David said I could rent space in their yard near Northallerton. With the deal done, and with the new tour programme ready to roll out in the third week of March, the coach was collected and paid for in the second week of March.

“Rachel and I felt relieved. The bookings had been coming in thick and fast and with the coach now ready, we both looked forward to that first tour. And then everything came to a halt!”

Keeping in touch

With the coach paid for, and with no lease payments required, Seawards was in a better place than many to ride out the COVID-19 storm. “We received a few grants but it was still a challenging situation,” says Ian. “We also recognised that it was important that we kept in touch with everyone who had booked with us. We quickly reimbursed those who wanted it, a move that I feel played a part in customers coming back to us once lockdown was lifted.”

With that first lockdown lifted, Ian and Rachel looked ahead to see when tours might start up again.

“Unsurprisingly there was a lack of confidence among our (mostly older) customers in wanting to travel,” continues Ian. “But in the September of 2020 we took 12 passengers to Paignton. It didn’t make us any money but I wanted to run it to try and restore some confidence and encourage people to travel with us again. But then we had the second lockdown!

“We had our savings and I took a job over the winter driving for the Post Office. However, that pause in operations made me realise that when things did return to some level of normality there would very likely still be a reticence to travel. I really wanted to run tours, even with low numbers, so I looked around for a well-specified minibus, acquiring an 11-plate 16-seat Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. That proved the right move. Today that vehicle is used for feeder work and private hire.”

‘Delightful Days’

At the start of 2021, to encourage people back, Seawards launched ‘Delightful Days’, a day trip programme that Ian describes as “like being on holiday, but you go home at night”.

He explains that he tries to include visitor attractions in tour itineraries that many others don’t.

“We look at places that are different,” he says, “such as the Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare, Geevor Mine in Cornwall and the Museum of Lead Mining near Abington in Dumfries and Galloway. For 2024, each month, on average, we’ll be operating one domestic tour and one of our ‘Delightful Days’. We’re seeing an increase in last-minute bookings. That reflects ongoing uncertainties, whether that’s financial, health or concerns about the state of the world.”

Ian explains that the focus is on domestic work. “We don’t offer any continental European tours,” he says. “Planning and operating them can be a hassle and our passengers have shown little interest. We do go over with private hires, but they’re the exception.”

Word of mouth

Seawards is keen to attract a new generation of customers.

“Our passengers are mostly in their 70s and 80s,” he says. “I’m keen to attract more of those in their 60s, even late 50s. We use social media to support our brochure and website activity, although word of mouth remains the strongest communication tool in our box. We choose our destinations with an eye on what I suppose we could call ‘younger oldies’. But one challenge in doing that is the quality of service in hotels. We’d found standards dropping. They’re beginning to recover now. One or two hotels offer drinks vouchers to guests in lieu of providing daily housekeeping services. Perversely our passengers rather like that!”

Operating what is now a 13-year-old coach also brings its own challenges.

“The Van Hool is a lovely vehicle and we look after it,” says Ian. “We don’t do schools work and we’re careful what private hire we accept. The coach probably wouldn’t look as good as it does if we didn’t. She’s also only Euro V. Our location means we don’t qualify for a grant to retrofit to Euro VI so if we do have to enter a Clean Air Zone or Low Emission Zone we pay as we go. We’re looking for a replacement vehicle, possibly third-hand. I don’t want to land myself with a huge finance bill though.”

Ian and Rachel like paper administration.

“With a walk-round check, If I find something wrong with the coach I’ll fill out the defect sheet and then hand it to myself”, he explains, smiling. “We keep full records, but keeping things simple works for us.”

Looking ahead, Ian says he’s keen to find premises in the Harrogate area.

“That’s our core operating area. That would give us the opportunity to expand the tour side of what we do, and possibly widen our catchment area to include Knaresborough and Wetherby. But step by step. I know we’re pleased we survived the pandemic. It wasn’t a given, and we recognise that many operators didn’t. Now, four years on, we’ve found a niche and our customers enjoy travelling with us. Giving them a great holiday or day out has always been what matters.”