Long time no post.. It's been an incredibly busy 6 months with Coach Hire Booking going from strength to strength. We've had the pleasure of meeting a number of coach operators who we've been dealing with over the years to let us further build on the existing relationships we have.

The winter, has seen some challenging weather to deal with but we're pleased to say that none of our services were affected - due in a large part to the excellent efforts of our coach operators.  Many of them were working late into the night and up early in the morning to clear yards of the snow.

We're already experiencing a surge of enquiries for 2010 so we expect marginal increases in price this year as demand outstrips supply.

Coach Hire Booking are now in a position to exclusively offer a choice of a 8 seater VIP minibus and a 16 seater executive minibus - these are available throughout the UK. 

Long time no blog. It's been an incredibly busy time for us here at coach hire booking, arranging coach hire for many of the festivals and sports events that are happening over the summer.

We're proud to be supplying coach hire to Glastonbury, V-Festival and many other festivals.   Due to the higher demand for coach hire in the summer, prices do rise so if you are planning on leaving the coach booking to the last minute, you may end up paying more that you would do by booking early.

We thought it would be useful (and amusing) to show how even the most experienced of coach hire drivers can get into a pickle if the area where the coach is picking up from is particularly awkward.  The excellent plugin used is this one - good work!

We're not sure how this Amphibious Coach would cope on a coach trip from Dover to Calais, but it certainly looks a good idea on paper. Dubbed as the worlds first true amphibious passenger coach it has been designed and built to stringent EU regulation. The cost of each coach is a cool £280,000...

Yesterday we were inundated with phone calls and requests for customers wishing to travel to Wembley to watch Everton play in the 2009 FA Cup Semi Finals after Everton beat Middlesbrough 2-1. As we deal with literally hundreds of coach operators on a monthly basis we have a unique capability within the coach hire market of understanding the availability of coach hire and the prices being commanded by coach operators.  Understandably when there is a massive demand for a limited resource (coaches), the price tends to increase - this is seen regularly for large sporting events, and music festivals where coach hire is used to transport large numbers of passengers.

Unfortunately many customers are not aware that prices can fluctuate so rapidly and as such can get rather animated on the phone as was the case on a few occasions yesterday. "Jumping on the band wagon" was a phrase used on a number of times when we explained coach hire prices had increased significantly - unfortunately we can not dictate prices that coach operators want for work, nor would we want to.  We have excellent relationships with coach operators througout the country which means we are able to ask for much cheaper coach prices than would normally be the case.

In July 2008, the city of London introduced the Low Emission Zone. The Low Emission Zone (LEZ) specifically affects older diesel-engined lorries, buses, coaches, large vans  and minibuses having over 8 seats.  Currently, all buses and coaches that have EURO III engines meet the LEZ standard. This is set to change in 2012 when vehicles must have engines meeting the EURO IV standard.

Coach operators that have coaches that are not EURO III compliant need to pay a £200 per day surcharge for entering the LEZ. Typically these are vehicles that are 10 years old or more, but quite often these are still coaches that are well maintained and useable.  The £200 LEZ charge is generally passed on to the passengers which can mean a 40% increase in price for visiting London by coach.  This means that passengers wishing to travel to London by coach need to either pay a premium on the quality of the coach or pay for the LEZ charge. Understandably, this may have an effect on the number of tourists visiting London by coach from other areas of the country.

Another potential impact of this policy is that it encourages coach hire companies to operate more in their own locality, as the potentially more lucrative market for coach trips to London will have reduced.

2009 is destined to be a testing time for the group coach travel and private coach hire market.  People throughout the country are tightening their belts for the predicted recession that is being touted in every major newspaper, and this means that they are likely to be cutting down on the luxuries and non essential items.

However, as mentioned in our previous post about the credit crunch and the effect on the coach travel market this could very well mean that people start to look for more cost effective ways of travel.  Cost effective doesn't mean that the public will want any lesser standard when travelling as a group though, and if the coach hire market wishes to take real, long term advantage of this increase in demand from the public then they must also look at increasing the standards of service for group coach travel.

With fuel prices reducing, group coach travel becomes even more cost effective that it was in 2008.  At Coach Hire Booking, we are already experiencing a surprisingly high number of enquiries for larger group coach trips, group coach travel as well as the normal smaller private hire enquiries. Our commitment to our clients is absolute, and because of this we use coach operators who share our passion for customer service and quality.  Coach travel has for too long played second fiddle to other methods of transport, and 2009 could be the year when the coach hire industry collectively decides to take advantage of the gap in the markets.

If any coach operators are reading, and want to become involved with Coach Hire Booking in 2009, please get in touch. 

As part of our new website, we've put together some prices and associated information for coach parking prices for major airports, central London etc.  We did this because we werent able to find all this information in one place and so thought it would be quite useful to provide it.

We'll be publishing the information on our new coach hire website, but in the mean time here are the coach parking prices that we've got together so far:

One of the interesting aspects of providing managed coach hire is that every coach hire job we do is different. Its easy to assume that organising a coach trip is simple and on most routine jobs this is the case. However, where an itinerary becomes complicated or unusual with lots of co-ordination much more planning is required.  Its very important for clients to provide us with all the details of the day especially with regards to location. Recently we had a job that required a double decker coach to  pickup at a luxury hotel.

The VIP client had specified that the double decker coach was to pick up at the door of the hotel which was approached via a narrow lane. We were assured that the access to the hotel would be suitable for a large coach, but unfortunately this was not the case - the entrance was blocked by a number of concrete blocks.

Luckily, we were able to notify the clients of the problem and to let them know in good time so that their planned coach journey would not be  delayed.

Although we put in every effort to assure that the coach hire goes as smoothly as possible there are occasions where there are problems such as this, so its very important that the trip organiser is aware of potential issues such as these. Of course, sometimes these things just happen and this just makes it a little bit more interesting and memorable! 

Hiring a coach in any part of the country can be a pain at the best of times, but hiring a coach in London can be extremely taxing especially in the peak months of May through to August. Whereas other areas of the country have smaller groups of local operators that people see driving about, London has a massive number of visiting coaches as well as those coach operators from London.

This means that people are unaware who their "local" coach operators are. Coach Hire Booking can help by providing people with a single contact point, freeing up time and saving valuable money. We are often able to source coaches much cheaper than the general public due to the amount of work we place with coach operators throughout London and the UK. We'll give you an example of how this can benefit you:

Typically a person will ring 2-3 coach hire companies in London to receive a the best quote - this isnt necessarily the cheapest quote, as the quality of service given to the client is of the utmost importance.

The 3 quotes means that a good 20-30 minutes will need to be put aside to refine the requirements and then to pass these to each London coach operator, and this is even before placing the coach booking. By contacting Coach Hire Booking, we can take the details of your required journey and quickly price it dynamically, in line with current market rates.  We will immediately have quality coach operators available who can do your journey - all without the hassle of a ring around.