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.