James Day reports from the 2020 Coachmarque Conference, where speakers discussed the way forward for the industry
The solidly-attended Coachmarque Conference for 2020 provided much food for thought for the industry, as well as the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT). Operators provided an abundance of valuable feedback in open discussions, and the event had the feeling of an industry keen to take decisive action. What follows are some of the highlights from the event.
[wlm_nonmember][…]
By subscribing you will benefit from:
- Operator & Supplier Profiles
- Face-to-Face Interviews
- Latest News
- Test Drives and Reviews
- Legal Updates
- Route Focus
- Industry Insider Opinions
- Passenger Perspective
- Vehicle Launches
- and much more!
Coachmarque goals
The conference opened with John Johnson, who is Chairman of Coachmarque as well as Director of Johnsons Coaches of Henley-in-Arden, holding an open discussion on what delegates wanted from Coachmarque.
One of the issues raised was the lack of awareness of Coachmarque amongst the public. One operator spoke about sending 80 emails to schools inviting them to its premises for a presentation about Coachmarque and the Guild of British Coach Operators and why it made them ‘a cut above other operators,’ but was disheartened to only receive two responses. Another highlighted that on a Google search for quality coach operators, the Coachmarque page is nowhere to be seen. While it was pointed out that Coachmarque should not try to rank higher on search engines than the websites of Coachmarque member operators themselves, it was widely agreed that the brand needs to be pushed more heavily – including by members – to make it more recognised by the public.
Another point made was the use and perhaps greater prominence of similar schemes outside the UK. Andy Warrender, CPT Coaching Manager, noted that Coachmarque originally came from the Netherlands, which explains its prominence there, and that the brand has been licenced to the CPT.
John Johnson asked the audience how many made sure Coachmarque stickers were on all their coaches, and not every operator in attendance raised their hands.
“We’ve got to help ourselves a bit,” he said. “Spend some time getting your team to get those signs on the coaches. Any publicity is good publicity when shiny new posh coaches are travelling up and down the country, we can do a fair bit ourselves by ensuring the Coachmarque brand is on them. It’s also important to link to the Coachmarque site in all the quotes we do.”
Coaching strategy
Andy Warrender, CPT Coaching Manager, provided a talk on the CPT’s Coach Strategy Document, which is expected to launch by the end of May this year. The delay is due to a purdah period ahead of the London Mayoral elections, as CPT would like to have input from Transport for London (TfL) on the document.
“Our objectives include raising the profile of the coach sector,” Andy said. “The sector doesn’t factor into a lot of people’s thinking, but is a key and integral part of the UK’s transport network. All too often, it is almost invisible. Nine out of 10 people don’t recognise anything beyond National Express.
“We also want to dispel some of the myths around coach travel. A lot of people carry perceptions of coach travel which are hopelessly out of date, going back to the 1970s and 1980s or based on school travel, which is not always on the newest or best of vehicles.
“The perception from taking children to school is something which may get even worse. If PSVAR has the impact it may well do, low floor buses could become much more common on school services and the opportunity to show kids what quality coach travel is like will be lost.
“Another aim is to articulate the importance of coach travel to the UK in a two-pronged attack, targeting government and local authority stakeholders as well as the media. The media has stereotypical views of coach travel, which are not always the best.
“We’re looking for a fair deal for coaches. There will be actions the industry needs to commit to and actions we will be seeking government – central and local – to commit to. We’re looking to improve the image of the sector, access to parking and drop off points at locations likely to attract group travel. In terms of planning, transport is a long way down the list of priorities when a new development is put forward for planning permission. It’s something both coach and bus would like to see improve.
“Greening of the sector is something the government would like to see improve. TfL has seen the impact ULEZ has had, and the changes later this year will have an even bigger impact.
“Recruiting and retaining good quality drivers has been a perennial issue for years. The industry has its house in order in many respects now. The approach of a lot of operators has to bring people in with people skills from outside the industry, as it’s easier to teach them to drive.
“Getting people to think coaches is the crucial part of it all. We have to get people to the stage where they see coaches as being integral to the UK’s transport network.”
Andy said the key way to get a good outcome is evidence: “Time and time again, we’ve gone to inquiries and consultation, and we’re always asked for the hard evidence behind what we’re saying.
“It’s very much a number’s game. In TfL’s ULEZ consultation, there were only four or five responses direct from the coach sector, which were largely disregarded. It was a similar situation with the cycling superhighway consultation, where responses from the coach sector were in single figures amongst 72,000 responses. We need to be able to demonstrate to stakeholders that there is a benefit from supporting the coach industry.”
Andy said that providing data and evidence of the lighter impact their operation may have on air quality than councils expect could lead to a lighter approach when clean air legislation is brought in. He noted there is a lot of data which can be accessed through coach management systems like Distinctive and Don’t Travel Empty, and tachograph analysis can also provide useful supporting data.
“We need some contribution from operators able to give us this data,” he added.
Brexit negotiations
Following a networking break, Steven Salmon, International Manager at CPT, provided another of his valuable talks on Brexit and its likely effect on the coach industry.
Much of the presentation covered the same ground as Steven’s previous talk at the CPT Coaching Conference, held towards the end of 2019 before the December General Election (CBW1423). He then spoke about the potential outcomes of negotiations with the EU, and what a trade deal for tourist coaches might look like.
An image of a set of scales was displayed to illustrate the point that a balancing act may be required. Currently, British business in Europe can carry out more or less the same work as European businesses in the UK, Steven said.
“In our negotiations, the more we ask to do in the EU after Brexit, the more their operators will want to do over here,” he explained. “It’s almost a foregone conclusion that we will allow closed-door tours in the UK, because it is the basis of the Interbus agreement which we have committed to sign. We’re welcoming European coaches to the UK in order to be able to take coach groups into Europe and bring them back.
“We could add to that occasional service cabotage, which is not in the Interbus agreement. We need to decide as an industry whether we want to go to the government and say the right to move parties around within Europe, but outside the UK, is important to us and sufficiently important to us to allow European operators to come to the UK and do the same thing.
“I heard that there were four Spanish coaches working in Scotland for the whole summer last year without going back to Spain, which is stretching the cabotage rules. The rules say you can undertake local jobs with coaches which are temporarily in the country they are in.
“The term ‘Temporarily’ has not traditionally been defined, but there was a case in Denmark last year involving a lot of Latvian operators who were essentially following cruise liners around and bidding very competitively to do all the shore excursions. That took a lot of work from the Danish coach operators and evaded a lot of VAT.
“Of course, the Danish operators put pressure on their government to define ‘temporarily’ as being a short period, so they could make the Latvian coaches go home. The Danish court decided that ‘temporarily’ meant ‘for seven days or less,’ which is not long at all (It should be noted that this ruling currently only applies in Denmark, but may be extended to the rest of the EU at a later date). Under a ruling such as that, the Spanish operators I mentioned in Scotland would not be able to stay for so long. If we did a competent trade deal, it would be quite clear what could be done by either group of operators in either trading environment.”
Steven said thoughts, understanding and agreements about bureaucracy could then be put on the table: “We have already said in our wonderful ‘welcome to Britain’ way that coach operators and their staff from the EU will be allowed into the UK after Brexit without visas or work permits. The thinking behind that is that our friendliness and openness will be matched by something equivalent from the EU, but there are problems with that.
“Firstly, it’s not an EU competence, but a member state competence. It involves trying to get all the member states to say British coaches can come and do cabotage in their country without visas or work permits, or declarations of how much drivers are paid so they can check it’s comparable to what their drivers earn. It’s something which could be put in a trade agreement, but we’ve already given it away.
“We could say to the DfT that we know why they offered it, but it’s important to follow it up and bring it home so we have an agreement in black and white that our members can go to the EU and do all these things. That is ambitious.
“For regular service operators, we’ve got to an interesting place where nearly all services coming into the UK are other-ended – there are very few UK business running into the EU on a regular basis. That’s not to say they won’t come back to the market later. An agreement could be for purely international services with purely international journeys, where everyone has to make a trip which goes over a border, or you could have the same services, but the right to carry people within a country within those services. It’s all technically possible, but the question is what the appetite for it is on both sides.”
Electrifying coaches
Richard Crump, Managing Director of Pelican Bus & Coach, spoke at length about electric coaches and Yutong’s current offering to the UK in that field.
“The decade which started a couple of weeks ago is going to be a decade of unprecedented change unlike any decade we’ve lived through before in our businesses,” he stated.
Richard asked the question of what is wrong with Euro VI, since it is a huge step forward compared to preceding diesel engines. “We understand it is an incredibly clean piece of technology, but it is still emitting 700g of CO2 every kilometre. A zero emission vehicle, of course, emits nothing.
“People will say that you have to make the electricity at a power station, but once the current UK mix of power generation is factored in, the carbon which comes out of that process is roughly two thirds of what comes out of a diesel vehicles. Most of that is because the UK’s mix of power generation still includes coal. Should all our power be generated by nuclear or renewables, the end figure would be zero.
“It’s not about engineering though, but politics. Politicians don’t understand that Euro VI is a very clean source of energy. We as an industry need to respond to political pressure for clean air, which is driving the case for zero emission vehicles. That is only going to increase this decade with 6% of all CO2 emissions in the EU generated by heavy vehicles. People are looking at those vehicles like never before. The end-game is zero emission, and any intermediate stepping stones like hybrid or gas will eventually not be enough. Nobody can have any issue with a zero emission vehicle.”
Richard then spoke about the Yutong TCe12 electric coach now available in the UK. The coach costs £305,000, with the required charger costing £20-35k and a variable cost for supporting infrastructure. However, Richard estimated maintenance costs to be a third of what is expected from a diesel vehicle, excluding tyres.
The vehicle has 281Kwh of battery capacity, which under normal circumstances should not be discharged below 12%. “In 10 years’ time, we’ll be talking about Kwh per kilometre, rather than miles per gallon,” Richard said. “We’re saying for every kilometre driven in the TCe12, you’ll use 0.9Kwh from the battery. This gives a range of about 275km, or 172 miles, on a single charge. The battery warranty guarantees 70% of the total capacity will be available after eight years.
“However, one of our vehicles operating in France achieved 0.7Kwh per kilometre, which is a 30% range increase to over 200 miles. The best daily range achieved by the three vehicles operating in the UK at Westways is 240 miles. The are very regularly achieving over 200 miles, though that has to be caveated on how the vehicle is driven, how the heating is used and the duty cycle.”
The vehicle is wheelchair accessible as standard, making it PSVAR-ready. A chairlift can be slotted in within four or five hours. GPS tracking and full real-time telematics are also standard features.
Questions for the CPT
CPT Chief Executive Graham Vidler arrived at the conference in the afternoon, and held and Q&A session with attendees.
It was noted that the CPT’s engagement with politicians in the past had been reactive, rather than proactive, and suggested that the organisation should be influencing and educating politicians on the coach industry at an early stage.
Agreeing with the sentiment, Graham said: “We need to get in early while people are still forming their ideas and thinking about the outcomes they are trying to achieve, rather than respond and adjust the measures they have already decided on taking to achieve their outcomes.
“We need to do more of it in future. One small example of what we’re doing now is a meeting with one of the new Conservative MPs in the North West who came in through the Boris landslide. This was the first meeting with a trade association that MP had and as soon as my colleague explained some of the concerns around the Manchester CAZ, a relationship was built. It is too late in the day to be influencing Manchester’s CAZ, but it is that sort of engagement which we need to do more of.”
Graham was asked if he felt he had a good handle on what the coach industry is looking for. He responded: “On the coach side when I took the job, I was given a skeleton plan for its strategy. Since then, we’ve been working to capture ideas from the industry and I think we now have a pretty good idea of the issues which matter to the industry – issues around CAZs, planning and provisions of facilities around major sites in towns and cities and some longer-term future issues, such as adjusting to the progressive demand on the industry to be greener.
“Our door is not shut, so we’re happy to here more ideas.”
One question which struck a chord with the audience asked for reasons for operators to be optimistic, based on a perceived kicking the industry has received recently.
Graham responded: “I understand how hard done by the industry feels and it feels like things are being done to the industry, rather than the industry being an active participant. It strikes me that many of these things are things which the Government is going to want anyone in the transport business to do – improving emissions, increasing accessibility and so on. I think those things are inevitable.
“The question is how they are designed, and how we as an industry get better influence the people making the decisions. That’s where we need to find our optimism.”
Better branding
Craig McVoy, Founder and ‘Chief Experience Officer’ of Beyond Brand, provided the keynote speech of the conference, which was focused on how coach operators could improve their brand.
He noted that attendees clearly already recognised the importance of having their brand represented positively by committing to Coachmarque.
He said: “If you ask people what makes them loyal to a brand, they might say product, price, service or availability, but those things are expected as a minimum now. What we ask now is whether businesses follow the right values, or companies we trust to do the right thing by their customers and staff.
“I believe the loyalty you get from your brand is connected to the amount of time you spend with your brand and whether you want it to be a pleasurable experience, or to reduce the amount of pain you have.”
As part of the presentation, Craig played a viral advert from Dollar Shave Club, which he described as one of his favourite brands. The tongue-in-cheek video, which stars Dollar Shave Club CEO Michael Dubin, reportedly cost the company less than $5,000 to make, but generated 12,000 orders in 24 hours. Since being uploaded to YouTube in March 2012, it has been viewed 26 million times on the business’ own YouTube channel, never mind as an advert on other videos or websites. The business enjoyed meteoric growth since its launch, and was sold to Unilever after five years for a reported $1bn.
“To be irreplaceable, a brand has to be different,” he said.
As part of the presentation, Craig handed out quiz cards to each attendee, who had to guess which brands certain slogans belonged to. Examples included ‘Every Little Helps’ (Tesco), ‘Reassuringly Expensive’ (Stella Artois) and ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ (John Lewis). Most delegates did well on the quiz, with the vast majority getting more than half correct.
Following this, a similar quiz was held, but this time delegates had to guess the coach operator based on the opening text taken from their website – with names and locations redacted. It was striking how similar every operator was, and the highest score in the room was six out of 12, with most people scoring three or less.
“You need to think about creating a brand valued beyond just the products and services you provide,” Craig said.
[/wlm_ismember]
