Tour by coach, travel in style

Its not just holiday parks, campers and caravanners who are driving the resurgence in holidays at home in 2009. Tours and holidays by coach are making a comeback in the recession with nearly seven million people expected to take a coach tour this year.

Bookings for coach day trips, short breaks and longer holidays for 2009 have surged as people look for extra value with the all inclusive nature of coach tours – hotel accommodation with meals, entrance tickets to attractions plus travel from close to home – appealing to budget seekers.

Research in 2009 by JDA for the Coach Tourism Council, which represents 150 of the UK’s leading coach tour operators and specialist coach holiday booking agencies, indicates that with more people retiring and the over 65s population continuing to increase, there will be many more potential coach touring customers.

The latest Coach Tourism Council Handbook for 2009/10 underlines the sheer size, importance and diversity of the UK’s coach industry and why it is not just value that makes coach tours so appealing. For example coaches easily outscore planes, cars and trains for being the greenest and safest form of transport.

“Despite thousands being hit hard by the credit crunch, high unemployment and awful returns on savings, its easy to forget that there are still millions of people who are largely unaffected by the current economic turmoil,” said CTC chairman Sean Taggart.

The surge in bookings is backed up by specialist coach booking website, coachholidays.com which sells tours on behalf of more than 50 UK operators. It reports year on year sales up by as much as 50 per cent.

This Handbook supports a newly designed website - coachtourismcouncil.co.uk - which provides an easy-to-use and informative guide to all aspects of coach travel for consumers and how they can book excursions, short breaks and holidays both in the UK and abroad with coach operators from across the UK.

Coach facts:

• 273 million people went on a coach for leisure purposes last year while nearly seven million people spent £1.15 billion on a UK coach touring holiday.
• In addition there were 266 million day trips by coach with each passenger spending more than £50 on the trip.
• Coach travel is the greenest travel option in the UK today with the lowest carbon dioxide emissions per passenger per kilometre of any mode of transport
• A coach is twice as efficient as a train, nearly four time more efficient than the care and six times more efficient than air travel
• Coaches help cut congestion – a coach carrying 50 passengers takes the place of 20 cars on the road
• Travelling from London to Edinburgh by coach is four times cheaper than going by car
• Safety: Coaches are seven times safer per mile than a car. They each get a maintenance check every day, and a full examination every four to six weeks
• The increased popularity of London’s theatres had been helped by coach passengers who account for 10 per cent of theatre visitors