Due to continued growth, Coach Hire Booking require new and existing coach and minibus operators to join us. We provide high quality work, the best payment terms in the industry and prefer to work with coach operators as a partnership.

With many corporate contracts in place throughout the country, we are able to provide regular quality work to coach operators able to demonstrate the quality and professionalism that is required with this type of work. We also provide a large variety of private hire work ranging from day trips, school visits or trips abroad.

Contact us now for further details.

Coach hire prices are quite difficult to understand unless you are able to appreciate the complexities of coach hire. We regularly get queries about our coach hire prices. Often coach hire pricing, like many things is best explained with the aid of an example. 

Quite often people will book seats on coaches in a similar way to how they do on trains - they pay a price per seat. This is a fixed price, calculated by the coach company e.g. National Express, based on an average vehicle "load".  When booking a private hire coach, the pricing differs as there are many parameters included in the coach hire pricing. These include standard of vehicle, distance and length of time the coach is required as-well as any supplementary prices and of course seasonal adjustments.

If a coach company provides a regular service, for example for Away supporters they also take into account the volume of work they are receiving and as such reduce the cost accordingly. It makes sense - if you can have 20 coach hire jobs a season the coach operator will give a better coach hire price than just a single hire. 

As we provide coach operators corporate and private hire work throughout the year on a nationwide basis, we are able to negotiate better coach hire prices.  Our prompt payment initiatives ensure that the coach operators we use have a consistent and reliable source of income throughout the year.

You've no doubt heard the phrase "the customer is always right", and there is a valid argument that this is indeed the case. In the coach hire industry, you're not just dealing with the customer at the end of a phone or on email, you need to remember that there are many other customers behind the scenes travelling on the actual coach or minibus. We're privileged to work with excellent coach and minibus operators who all have the same respect and courtesy for the customers that we have. 

There was an incident the other day where one of our clients flights was delayed and was unable to contact us.  As we track all flights where we are doing an airport transfer we we able to seemlessly re-arrange the coach transportation to the new arrival time.  The customer was very thankful to us as he'd been concerned that he'd miss the airport transfer. It just shows that a bit of forward planning can save a heck of a lot of time in the long run - if we hadn't tracked the flight we would have potentially had to send the vehicle twice and also have the customers waiting around!

There's no getting away from it - even the coach and bus industry is not immune to political spin. Recently it was announced that First Bus Group were preferred bidder for the London 2012 Olympics.

Tessa Jowell, minister for the Olympics was quick to endorse the company saying: "As a company based in Aberdeen, this is yet another example of how businesses are benefitting from the London Olympic and Paralympic Games". So, the impression is that FirstGroup are a company based in Aberdeen, Scotland and the Olympics will bring benefit to that local area? Unfortunately, whilst FirstGroup are indeed based there, their operations stretches far into deepest darkest England: Indeed they are one of the largest bus operators in many local regions. 

Interestingly, one of the many tasks that the successful party will have is to manage and co-ordinate  the direct coach hire operations. If FirstGroup win, it is possible that they will be managing the coach hire services of their rivals Stagecoach and National Express.

Disclaimer: 

All respective companies trademarks acknowledged.

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. 

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.

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. 

Well, its been a number of weeks now since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the bail outs of banks by the UK Government. How is this effecting the coach hire industry? From our daily chats with coach hire operators up and down the country, its clear that there is certainly an air of concern floating about in the industry.

However, we believe that this climate can offer the coach hire industry the ideal base from which the industry can re-evaluate and re-establish its position as a first class option for transport.

With fuel prices now dropping due to the reduced demand for oil, people having an increased interest in protecting the environment and wanting a comfortable journey all for a reasonable price then coach hire suddenly starts to become more appealing to the public. The coach hire industry needs to take this opportunity and move forwards.

At Coach Hire Booking, we are still seeing a healthy flow of enquiries for coach hire in all regions of the UK. Much of the interest is from past clients who appreciated the quality of coach operator we work with and see the value in the combined service that we offer. By working closely with the coach operators, we are beginning to redefine the coach hire market into a quality, service driven and customer focused product.

We'd welcome hearing from more coach operators about what they think, and how the current downturn in the economy is effecting them. Feel free to comment below!

CHB.