Beating the Recession – Helping to grow your business was the theme of the joint Bonded Coach Holidays/Coach Tourism Council 2009 Coach Holiday Conference at the Ramada Hotel & Resort, Hollingbourne held in early April.
This major event – now in its fourth year – attracted more than 130 delegates from across the coach tourism industry and was opened by the Mayor of Maidstone, Councillor Denise Joy while the Chair of Visit Kent, Amanda Cottrell was one of the main speakers.
Key note speakers also included travel pundits Simon Calder and Alison Rice, Hugh Sumner, Director of Transport for the Olympic Development Authority and Paul Richer of leading international E commerce company Genesys.
“The Conference is now the major annual event for everyone associated with coach tourism,” said CTC chairman Sean Taggart of the Albatross Travel Group, which is based in Larkfield. “Like all travel sectors the coach industry faces challenging times and this was an opportunity to focus on how we can beat the recession and actually grow the coach tourism business.
“Conferences such as this help us to learn, address concerns and discuss how we can as an industry continue to move forward and it was appropriate that we should do this in Kent, one of the major destinations for coach tours.”
Following an industry Workshop on Friday morning, delegates headed off by coach on a choice of three guided familiarisation trips to Canterbury, Medway – including Rochester, the Historic Dockyard and Dickens World – and the Heart of Kent with visits to Sissinghurst and Bibbenden Vineyards.
For a more detailed report read on….
The do’s and dont’s of how to get a news story used in the local and national press was the theme of a joint presentation by The Independent travel editor and TV and radio pundit, Simon Calder and travel broadcaster Alison Rice.
Simon said the coach industry could be likened to Terminal 5 at Heathrow: “Terminal 5 has a terrible image but I can tell you that it’s fantastic. Coaches have that kind of relationship with the public, who don’t know how good they are”. Getting the message across was a huge challenge that involved persuading the media to change their perception and treat coaching more seriously.
Alison Rice said those involved with coach tourism needed to bang the drum to highlight the fact that coach tourism, with nearly nine million passengers, was bigger than other travel sectors. She said: “You must tell people about your low emissions, your door-to-door pick-ups, the fact that tourists don’t have the faffing around they have at airports, and the value for money you can deliver, especially in the Eurozone with pre-paid meals,” she said. “The coach is green and highly inclusive. I used to suggest single people of a certain age take a cruise, but I hadn’t thought of coach holidays. The cruise managed to bring down the age of its customers successfully. Coach operators should bring in new people too.”
Simon urged operators to use PR to get the key messages across. He said the pressure on local newspaper journalists meant they were always keen to receive good stories and the move to “churnalism” with newspapers now having fewer staff, meant there was more concentration on quantity than quality. But he said operators should not rely on getting noticed by simply sending a email. “I get perhaps 300 emails a day, he said. I don’t know exactly how many because I have never counted them before deleting them. But I don’t delete anything that doesn’t look like it’s a press release.”
2012 Olympics
Olympic Delivery Authority director of transport Hugh Sumner outlined the huge logistical task of running the Olympics transport programme and ensuring that 16,000 athletes, more than 40,000 journalists and millions of spectators were moved with efficiency and quickly to the various Olympic venues each day. At peak times 900,000 people were expected to be on the move with 120,000 people leaving London when competition ended for the day.
For the Olympic Park 3,385,000 tickets would be available with 420,000 going to Portland for the sailing events, with tickets divided more or less equally between London residents, UK residents and visitors from overseas. There would be huge opportunities for private charter and for tours, with a great number of coach operators being involved in transportation. ”We need you to think of how you can participate in this event and work with us,” he said.
However when it came to hoew to obtain tickkets, Mr Sumner said that tickets would be issued through authorised Olympic channels and as far as he was aware, no special arrangements would be offered to the group travel industry.
Chairman of Visit Kent, Amanda Cottrell, told delegates that operators should not neglect Kent as a major tourism destination which supported 50,000 jobs. Visit Kent was able to offer a ‘one-stop shop’ for booking group tours including itinerary planning and help in arranging visits to the county’s many and varied attractions. The county offered more to see and do than literally anywhere else in the country with almost too many attractions to mention. The cathedrals of Canterbury and Rochester, a huge Sikh temple in Gravesend, the castles of Leeds, Hever, Dover, Deal and many others, as well as military history at Chatham dockyard, should all be part of a tour programme. The county also boasted a host of literary figures giants - Chaucer, Dickens, Jane Austen, Ian Fleming and HE Bates – who all added to the tourism mix.. Above all the county was keen to welcome coaches, with excellent facilities in Medway and a planned new coach park in Canterbury.
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