The leisure specialists

Specialist Leisure Group CEO Richard Calvert and National Holidays Managing Director Graham Rogers outline to Andy Izatt how the Group’s multiple brands, of which the best known is Shearings Holidays, are being focused on maximising customer choice and satisfaction

Lone Star Funds-owned Shearings Leisure Group has been renamed the Specialist Leisure Group (SLG), but the change in title doesn’t signify any dilution of the coaching focus of what continues to be the UK’s biggest coach operator by some considerable margin.

Shearings Holidays remains the UK’s largest escorted tour provider serving more than 170 destinations while the Group’s other main brand, National Holidays, is the country’s leading specialist in short breaks by coach with over 1,000 holidays offered both at home and across Europe.

The name change is a reflection that the SLG is a multi-brand business with numerous specialisms. [wlm_nonmember][…]

[/wlm_nonmember] [wlm_ismember]

It can offer its customers, new and old, a rich portfolio of holiday and leisure experiences and it wants to get that message across loud and clear.

“We strive to consistently deliver safe, enjoyable and memorable leisure experiences at amazing value,” says the company on its website and that’s the vision of SLG Chief Executive Richard Calvert who relocated the firm’s head office from its traditional home in Miry Lane, Wigan to Waterside House, modern premises at Wigan Pier Business Park, last November.

“This is my 30th year in travel,” explained Richard.

“I started as an overseas rep for NAT Holidays in the ski resort of Andorra in the Spanish Pyrenees. NAT had a winter programme called Neilson which later became a separate company. I then progressed through the ranks, eventually moving into purchasing.

“At Owners Abroad – what is now First Choice – I was Head of Purchasing, joining Airtours to do the same before moving back to First Choice to become Purchasing Director looking after global procurement. First Choice merged with Thomson Holidays to become TUI UK and I was Overseas Purchasing Director of that until 2008 when I was headhunted to become Managing Director of Thomas Cook’s tour operations in the UK.

“After three years at Thomas Cook, the American investors behind destinationweddings.com persuaded me to become its Chief Executive. It was based in Boston, Massachusetts, but I didn’t relocate, preferring to commute from the UK for four and a half years.

“I expanded the business through acquisition to create the Celebration Travel Group which was providing everything from group travel to weddings, honeymoon travel and renewal of vows. Destinationweddings.com is still the biggest wedding retail travel company in North America.

“I was then approached by private equity firm, Lone Star Funds which owned Shearings Leisure Group. It was looking for someone to drive some energy and strategic direction into what is a collection of businesses that have a lot of heritage behind them. I became Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in April 2017.”

Experts in leisure 

Said Richard: “What I noticed when I joined Shearings Leisure Group was there was a lack of understanding amongst our people of what the Group could offer. We have great brands. In addition to Shearings Holidays, there’s National Holidays, Caledonian Travel, UK Breakaways, Coast and Country Hotels, and Bay Hotels. The business leaders of each knew the size and scope of what we did, but the people working for them didn’t necessarily understand the sheer breadth of it.

“An example would be National Holidays, which has a huge events business. It caters for everything from Strictly Come Dancing to the Edinburgh Tattoo and Silverstone Grand Prix. For the first 12 weeks after I became CEO any member of staff could join me for breakfast and one of the things I was being told at those meetings was that they didn’t realise we did all of that.

“We are a business employing 2,600 colleagues drawn from 29 different nationalities that operates holidays, breaks and cruises to over 200 destinations and carry 1.1m customers annually. Shearings is the strongest most recognisable brand, but is known for representing something in particular.

“National Holidays is also a hugely successful business, but a lot of people would not necessarily have made the connection that it was part of the same group, so straight away it was clear to me that communication needed to improve both within the business and outside.

“That’s what lies behind the name change to SLG because we’re a grouping that specialise in many different areas.

“Our new strapline is ‘Excellence through expertise’ because that’s what we’re trying to drive forward. We’re unashamedly a profit driven company and that enables us to invest, but we also always want to be customer centric.

“When we were Shearings Leisure Group, an outsider looking in had nowhere to look to learn about what we could offer so, as well as changing the name, we’ve created a corporate website that explains who we are and what we stand for.

“When I came into the group I quickly established our mission and values. We have five fundamentals, which are Passion, Respect, Innovation, Delivery and Excellence – PRIDE – because the team is proud of the scope of this business. We’re passionate about what we do and we respect one another.

“We have got to be innovative and come up with new ideas and deliver on our promises, whether it’s profitably working, timelines or reaching milestones, and we have to show excellence when it comes to our approach to safety and the service we deliver to customers.

“PRIDE is permeating throughout the whole organisation. It’s transcending everything we do. I’m pretty pleased it’s not just a poster on the wall here and there. It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO, Managing Director of one of our businesses, a coach driver, graphic designer, marketer or a hotel barman, everybody should display the same values across all our brands. We’re one team.

“I don’t think our strategy will be to bolt on anymore businesses. There is definitely scope to develop what we already have. The heart of what we do continues to be coach and that’s what we do best. We want it to continue that way. That’s why we have invested so much in our fleet and continue to do so.

“We have three strong coach brands in Shearings Holidays, National Holidays and Caledonian Travel, but we can optimise the excellence of what we do with each of them on the periphery through offering complementary types of holiday.

“Where we have customers who have already been with us many times, we need to be able to give them new options. If they want to go to Europe, we can take them by coach, but they can also go by air or rail with us.

“They might want to go further afield because they’re celebrating a special anniversary or something similar.

We need to be able to cater for that as well. When we launched our worldwide brochure recently, a couple booked a trip to Borneo on the first day because they wanted to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.

“We’re not diverting people away from coach – far from it. It’s about using coach, where we are best in class, as the facilitator to add other types of experience because we want to keep those people coming back to us.

“We’re in quite an enviable position in that we already have 66% repeat levels amongst customers. However, one of the dangers of that is that you can end up marketing to the same people and we need to keep attracting new customers. Once they’re in, they can then see the portfolio of brands we have and the huge diversity of travel available. Yes, what we do is centred on luxury coach travel, but what we need to sell is the breadth of our offering.”

A new brand

“Through Lone Star Funds, we own 42 out of our 45 hotels,”

Richard continued. “This is a vertically integrated business where much of our hotel occupancy is filled through our own product portfolio. Customers could be those who drive to a hotel themselves. One of our brands, UKBreakaways.com is one of the UK’s leading self-drive and short break travel companies, or it could be they have travelled by coach, rail or air.

“When Lone Star invested it bought the hotel ownership company as well as the operating business and tour operations. We believe there is value created by being in control of our own destiny. If we have an asset, we’re in control in terms of its size and delivery, and the three hotels we don’t own are on extremely long leases.

“We have just introduced a new hotel brand called Country Living. Country Living is a magazine published by Hearst, a huge business that also owns well known titles such as House Beautiful, Good Housekeeping, Men’s Health, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar.

“Country Living is huge in the UK and the US, and we jointly came up with the idea of creating a hotel brand which we would 100% operate with the name being licensed to us.

“We did it because we have hotels in world famous destinations such as Bath and Harrogate and wanted to optimise those assets. We believe that the size and power of the Country Living brand coupled with us investing by heavily refurbishing the hotels we have in those locations will enable us to access a different type of customer who will then realise that we have a lot more to offer.

“There will be some existing customers who will want to continue going to those hotels because they’re loyal to them, but there will definitely be some Country Living readers who would love to try a Country Living hotel because it offers a quintessentially British experience. We expect a lot of interest from abroad as well as the UK.

“Bath has our first Country Living hotel and it reopened on 28 May. Harrogate followed on 7 July. Inevitably there were some initial teething issues after the refurbishments, but operationally we have already had some great satisfaction scores from a really diverse customer base. We’ve had people coming to stay from all over the world. While you can never achieve perfection, you can strive and we’re really pleased with how it has gone so far.”

Coaching specialism

 

Graham Rogers is Managing Director of National Holidays, Caledonian Travel and UK Breakaways.

He also has key responsibilities for SLG such as managing the relationship with EvoBus (UK) and Mercedes-Benz.

National Holidays and Caledonian are line of route operations while Shearings is predominately hub and spoke, with customers feeding into one of six interchanges to join their tour coach.

Traditionally the Shearings brand has been targeted at the over 55s, mainly couples, but also empty nesters, possibly retired and demographically certain types of household. Geographically it’s strongest in the northwest, Yorkshire, south and southeast, but also has a good following in the Midlands, Wales and southwest.

Hull-based National Holidays with its sub-brand portfolio appeals to a younger, broader spectrum of customer although it still takes older people on seaside holidays. Its key markets are in the northeast, Yorkshire, Humberside, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and to a lesser extent, the Midlands – the main conurbations.

“We have 25 liveried coaches contacted to us for Caledonian,” explained Graham.

“It’s very much a Scottish brand for a more traditional Scottish audience that we understand well. Customers come almost exclusively from the east of Scotland and because service delivery is extraordinarily consistent through the localisation of the business, it has a very loyal following. It’s a bit more seasonal than the rest of our operation.

“Caledonian is very cost efficient and we enjoy good relationships with the key transportation providers we have – operators like Whitelaw’s of Stonehouse, Park’s of Hamilton and MacPhails Coaches of Salsburgh which invest heavily in their own fleets to serve the best interests of our business. We’re very forthright on our service level agreements, and they deliver.

“Like everything we do, Caledonian is a high quality operation. Yes, it’s outsourced, but that is done in a very well managed and controlled way, which historically has been very difficult for that kind of model. It has nailed the quality angle which other providers have struggled to do.”

“We operate 240 coaches of our own for Shearings and National Holidays. During peak season that goes up to 270 and broadly the split is 50/50. It varies slightly from one year to the next, but currently Shearings are running 140 vehicles and National the remaining 130. The entire fleet is now Setra (40%) or Mercedes-Benz Tourismo (60%) and our relationship with EvoBus allows us to flex the number we operate to meet our requirements. There are also a very small number of select operators that work for us with vehicles in livery.

“What we operate is exclusively there to serve our own programme. Following the merger between Shearings and Wallace Arnold, the fleet was up to about 400 vehicles, but around seven years ago, we properly right-sized it to reflect demand. It has stayed at a relatively consistent level since, but that’s not to say that we are not continually assessing our requirements.

“Being able to flex the size of the fleet is part of the benefit of working with EvoBus. The relationship is very good. We started working with it 10 years ago and went through a very robust process at that time in the knowledge that we wanted to choose what we felt was best in class and stay with it. We wanted absolute product consistency and ultimately EvoBus has given us that. It’s a competitive field, but with the Mercedes-Benz marque underpinning everything we do, it’s incredibly flexible to the demands of our business in terms of us retaining and returning vehicles.

“I don’t think there has ever been an occasion when EvoBus has failed to deliver coaches to us in a timely fashion, which is incredibly important to us. Their obsession with quality is commendable. I honestly can’t think in all of the hundreds of vehicles we have taken, we have ever had to return one saying get this one right. They have literally gone into service virtually fault free.

“Is there a cost to all of that? Of course there is, but the full life-time value has proved itself time after time, and I think that’s reflected in the way that the Tourismo has now become the ubiquitous vehicle of choice across the industry. As a manufacturer, you don’t get to that point by being anything less than excellent at what you do.”

Celebrating Celebration 

While a variety of coach specifications have been chosen in the past reflecting what were perceived as different brand requirements, the 45 Mercedes-Benz Tourismos delivered for this season introduced a new standard ‘Celebration’ specification that is being used by both Shearings and National Holidays.

The only differences are the colours of the seat trim and external livery. All the coaches are 13.115m, two-axle, 48-seaters powered by Euro VI Mercedes-Benz OM470 engines rated at 315kW.

“Going for a common specification is a significant sea-change, but I felt we should have certain standardisation,” explained Richard.

“It’s about the balance between sovereignty and synergy. Sovereignty of the brands is sacrosanct. They each have their own massive customer following, but synergy is about taking a common sense approach in what we do. Why were we ordering more than one specification when, if we harmonised them, we could just differentiate a little through the saloon colours and external livery.

“There need only be one type of seat, for example. The fully reclining seats have lateral movement to give extra legroom and are really comfortable so they need only be of one type. Legroom is better than on any airline, and there are other standard refinements that we have had for a while, like the Lytx DriveCam safety system that may not be obvious to passengers.

“Standardisation in terms of what we offer is the way forward in my view. It drives better efficiency within the business, enables cross utilisation of vehicles where necessary, but at the same time, it’s still all underpinned by retaining the brand identity.

“There is now a psychology within the business that there is a SLG standard – a minimum that we always deliver. I was with the bosses of Country Living at one of our other hotels recently. I said one of our new coaches was outside. Would they like to see it? They went onboard and were really impressed by what they found.

They asked whether all our coaches were like this and I said, all of them. What we provide are luxury vehicles and it’s essential that we continue to lead the field in that.

“We see a future for Shearings’ premium Grand Tourer brand which I think had lost its way in the market place. It had become too much about the enhanced specification of the coaches rather than the whole experience and other providers have introduced similar vehicles.

“It needs to be about the whole holiday experience – the customer really feeling that they’re getting something extra from the educational/tour experience.Jane Atkins, who joined Shearings Holidays as Managing Director about a year ago, has done a lot of work with her team to re-launch Grand Tourer for 2019, and sales are already broadly around 70% up.”

“Last year we took the decision to put WiFi on all our coaches,” said Graham.

“That’s no small task, logistically or financially, but it’s what we think customers now expect and will be available to them across Europe. We can’t run the biggest coach holiday business in the country and be the largest escorted operator, if our fleet is not only safe and modern, but also meeting people’s expectations in terms of the onboard facilities on offer.”

Added Richard: “We’re also introducing an onboard entertainment system at the beginning of September. Reflecting different demographics, there’s one for Shearings called Road Show while National’s is Wave. It’s all free to the customer’s mobile, laptop or tablet and underlines that their holiday experience starts as soon as they board the coach. It’s a massive investment for us.”

Continually engaging

Said Richard: “While around a third of bookings are now made on the internet, it’s important not to lose sight of the importance of the personal touch. Bookings can be made by phone and through one of our outlets or agents, but if someone wants, they can still come to our head office and we have a meeting room adjacent to reception for that purpose.

“We have an incredibly high level of engagement with our customers through social media channels, which I see as being a huge positive, and as I’m sure you have gathered, I’m a great believer in listening to what people have to say.

“Because of that, we’ve created a Shearings customer advisory board which meets quarterly. It’s made up of a dozen people who applied to be members and we listen to whatever they have to say. When you sometimes have preconceived ideas about what’s important and what’s not, you don’t realise what customers are really thinking until they’re sat in front of you telling you. We’re setting up a similar board for National Holidays.

“This year we’ve also launched a campaign for customers to name our 140 Shearings coaches and the first two were christened at our head office a couple of months ago. The families were invited as our guests.

“One was named after a lady called Rebekah who sadly passed away, but who had been a loyal customer, while the other was christened Tom after a young lad with autism who loves our coaches.

“Customers have told us we should name vehicles after loyal drivers past and present and we’re doing that as well. It’s about giving something back and underpins the importance we place on respect. People love spotting the named coaches out on the road.

“While we have fiercely loyal customers, as I’ve said, we also need to keep attracting new ones. We must keep adapting our offering to drive people to our own hotels, and the others we use, and make sure everyone has a great time. It’s why we must keep investing in the business, the brands and responding to opportunities.

“Quite apart from the new coaches we’ve bought, our capital expenditure on our hotels has been £12m this year alone. Over the last couple of years National Holidays has broadened its appeal by focusing more on developing several separate sub-brands within its portfolio – Showtime Events, Family Fun and Sports. We need to keep doing that sort of thing. Then there are opportunities like the Chinese Terracotta Warriors at Liverpool’s World Museum which have been hugely successful for both National Holidays and Shearings. We must keep identifying them.

“What we have is the scale of operation to deliver all of that, but while Shearings and National Holidays may be particularly strong standalone names, it’s also important that we take advantage of the synergy benefits that accrue. Can we procure better? Can we lease our vehicles better? Can we get better engineering synergies, insurance and spare parts? Can we make our back office function best in class?

“Where this Group is most successful is when we’re multi-branded in the same location. On a business to customer basis, the brands must remain totally independent. We own the Wallace Arnold travel shops in Yorkshire, for example, and they sell both Shearings holidays as well as those offered by National Holidays. That’s in addition to other providers’ products that don’t directly compete such as Jet 2 holidays.

“Product differentiation is key to what we do. We’re not just maintaining ridership levels on our coaches. We’re growing them. Our utilisation needs to be over 80% and on our destination-based vehicles we’re running at over 80% occupancy.”

“For me as a coach warrior, Richard has brought a fresh perspective to what is a very old established sector,” said Graham.

“What hopefully has come across, and what drives this business, is that coach has a fantastic future. It might have taken its time to get there, but the quality of output across the industry has now reached new highs and I think the demographic appeal of coaching is so much broader than it used to be. Digital communication has helped us reach alternative audiences in ways that weren’t available to us before.

“The way young people interact today is completely different to their elders and we must embrace that. They’re incredibly environmentally conscious and we need to understand that as well, and respond going forward. We’re not at the stage of hybrid or electric coaches yet, but I think it’s going to come.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

History:  Specialist Leisure Group

The history of the brands that constitute the Specialist Leisure Group (SLG) began in 1903 with the establishment of Smiths Happiways, originally a haulage business that started operating coach holidays in 1914.

It operated its first tours to Europe in 1938 and was the first to resume after World War II in 1946 with a trip to Switzerland. One of the earliest European tour operators, it carried 6,000 passengers in 1947 of which 10% went abroad.

Smith Happiways was bought by Associated Leisure in 1982 and that company purchased Shearings two years later. Shearings had been established by Herbert Shearing in Oldham during 1919 and offered express coach services between Manchester and London.

Associated Leisure was subsequently bought by Pleasurama and the operations were merged and rebranded as Smiths Shearings.

National Holidays was formed in 1976 by the state-owned National Bus Company.

When it was privatised in the mid-1980s it was sold to Pleasurama to become Shearings National. Pleasurama was purchased by Mecca Leisure Group in 1989, which merged the Shearings National business with Smiths Shearings and the Shearings name was once again adopted.

Wallace Arnold, which was founded in 1912 in Leeds, was purchased by venture capital company, 3i in 1997 and 3i purchased a controlling stake in Shearings during 2005. The two were merged under the brand name WA Shearings before it was changed again to Shearings Holidays two years later.

In April 2016 the business was purchased by Lone Star Funds and Shearings Leisure Group was established to encompass the six brands that had been developed. Later that month UKBreakaways.com, which had been founded in 1998 and operated from Chesterfield, was purchased.

The Group was renamed Specialist Leisure Group in June 2018 to portray the breadth and depth of its diverse collection of leisure and travel brands.
[/wlm_ismember]