InterCity Coachlines launch $1 fares for New Zealand travel
December 16th, 2009 by Tim Uden
From today, InterCity Coachlines is selling NZD $1 coach fares for travel throughout New Zealand.
This is most likely to counter competition from upstart Naked Bus, which has been offering $1 coach fares since 2006.
Every InterCity coach service will have at least one $1 fare. However the announcement from InterCity indicates that this promotion will only run for the next 12 months.
It is great that competition from Naked Bus has pulled prices down so now New Zealand’s two main coach operators have cheap fares for travellers who are organised enough to book ahead.
I searched InterCity’s site to see how easy it was to find the cheap fares and it was no problem at all. Generally if I was to book a few weeks in advance I would have a pretty good chance to score a $1 ticket, which is similar to my experience with Naked Bus.
InterCity also have the advantage of no booking fee (Naked Bus charge $1), but once the bargain $1 fares have been sold Naked Bus still work out at around half the price of InterCity.
InterCity Coachlines New Zealand coach travel
Greyhound to start running coaches in the UK next month
August 20th, 2009 by Tim Uden
Starting on September 14, Greyhound coaches will start operating from London to Portsmouth and Southampton.
The new coach service will feature complimentary newspapers, air conditioning, toilets, free wireless internet, power sockets at each seat and a frequent rider programme. Greyhound’s UK coaches will have leather seating that promise to be more spacious than rival coach companies with 41 seats to a coach as opposed to the usual 50 seats.
Greyhound UK will adopt a yield-management pricing model like those used by low-cost airlines and rival coach operator Megabus. If you book in advance you will be able to get fares with low prices starting at £1 (plus a 50p booking fee).
From what I have seen, it looks like it will be a top quality coach service with nice little extras that will make it a great travel option.
Services from Portsmouth to London will depart from the Hard Interchange in Portsmouth with a pick-up on Edinburgh Road in the city centre and then run express toBulleid Way near Victoria Station in London. The trip will take two hours with 10 services per day. Portsmouth to London services will run from 6am to 6pm and London to Portsmouth services will run from 9am to 9pm.
Coach services from Southampton to London will depart from Southampton Town Quay with pick-ups at Southampton West Quay and Southampton University and will run express to London, terminating atBulleid Way near Victoria Station. The trip will take two hours with nine services per day.
Greyhound’s new coach services will be timed to met Isle of Wight ferry services.
The relatively recent resurgence in coach travel in the UK started with Megabus, whose £1 fares forced Scottish Citylink and National Express to become more competitive. Now with Greyhound entering the UK coach travel scene, it looks like low cost UK coach travel will be with us for a while.
This is good news for travellers fed up with Britain’s expensive rail services, although with Megatrain and some inexpensive deals offered by the likes of Chiltern Railways, East Midlands Trains, London Midland and Virgin Trains it looks like competition from cheap coaches is also starting to bring down the cost of rail travel, particularly on more competitive routes.
I think it is great that there is more competition and more cheap travel options in the UK, but I don’t really think that the Greyhound brand is worth all that much. In Australia, Greyhound have a relatively good reputation but in the United States they have a reputation as transport for the lower classes (although I would suggest that the riff-raff that hang around some US coach terminals would have a lot to do with this image). Greyhound is trying to capitalise on their American heritage – and the livery on their coaches suggests that they are trying to recreate a nostalgic image. In my opinion, that image works well in the US where you want to ride an American institution to get the full American experience; but that’s not what you want when you visit any other country. Greyhound coaches in Australia have a much more modern image than in the US and they’re not trying to be American – and why should they, Greyhound Australia has been around longer than Greyhound in the USA.
Unfortunately I get the feeling that Greyhound UK is trying to be too American. That is not going to appeal to many international tourists that come here to experience British culture and I expect it won’t appeal to too many British passengers either. An article in The Times says that “each coach will have names based on classic American songs such as Barbara Ann, Jolene and Peggy Sue” and one of the first Greyhound coaches in the UK will be named Sweet Caroline. It all sounds too American for a coach that will be travelling down the M3 to Southampton. I would prefer to ride a coach named Fluorescent Adolescent, Wonderwall or Sorted for E’s and Wizz than a coach named Sweet Caroline.
I get the feeling that this American branding will plant an image in peoples’ minds about the old Greyhound from American films. That is an old coach with uncomfortable seats and broken air conditioning where you sit next to some smelly passenger who hasn’t showered since she got on the coach two days ago in Tuscon and after 20 hours on the coach you pull into some awful terminal that is inhabited by the homeless. It’s not a good image and it is something that Greyhound is working hard to dispel. In the north-eastern United States Greyhound have introduced some excellent new services that have been re-branded with names like Bolt Bus and Neon. This new branding is necessary to appeal to a younger market that is turned off by the Greyhound brand. It is a shame really as Greyhound does have a good product that has evolved beyond the image that most people have.
FirstGroup, who took over Greyhound in 2007, shouldn’t try so hard to play up on Greyhound’s American heritage. After all it is a British company that I would assume it looking to the future. Rather than slapping a retro 1950s paint job on a modern coach, they should adopt a more modern brand like Greyhound have done in Australia (note that Greyhound in Australia are not related to Greyhound in North America and the UK). From what I have read about Greyhound’s new UK service, I get the impression that it will more closely resemble theBoltBus and Neon brands. This is what Greyhound should be aiming for.
Bus & coach travel in North America
June 18th, 2009 by Tim Uden
The Wall Street Journal have an article on their site about bus and coach travel in the United States.
It basically says that the standard of coach travel in the United States has improved a lot in recent years, although I would add that most of the improvements have been in the Northeast where there are shorter distances, more customers and more competition between bus and coach operators like Greyhound, Megabus and the various Chinatown bus operators.
Here’s the video from the Wall Street Journal article:
New coach travel pass for New Zealand
March 14th, 2009 by Tim Uden
I’ve just added information about the new Naked Bus New Zealand coach pass to the BUG website.
The Naked Passport is the simplest of New Zealand’s coach travel passes where each pass is valid for a set number of trips so it is obviously better value on longer trips.
Passes are NSD $157 (£59) for five trips; NZD $260 (£98) for 10 trips; NZD $330 (£124) for 15 trips; NZD $370 (£139) for 20 trips; NZD $437 (£164) for 25 trips; NZD $497 (£187) for 30 trips. There is also an Unlimited Pass that costs NZD $597 (£224) for as many bus trips that you fit into one year.
A travel pass costing around £8 per trip may not sound like a good deal when you can buy tickets on Naked Bus from only NZD $1 (38p) each. However those cheap seats need to be snapped up around a month in advance and last minute seat on a route such as Auckland-Rotorua can still cost NZD $42 (£16).
Flexibility has a price, but with the Naked Passport at least that price is still very affordable compared with the alternatives.
The Naked Passport is better suited to independent travellers who don’t want to plan everything months in advance, while travellers who don’t mind booking a set itinerary weeks in advance just to get the cheapest fares will do better with individual tickets.
A compromise between flexible travel and getting the best deal is probably the best way to use this pass. For instance you can plan a rough itinerary and pre-book a handful of tickets in advance to get the cheapest seats and then buy a Naked Passport to use on last minute travel when prices are higher. This means that you still have an independent element to your trip, but pre-booking some tickets in advance can mean the difference between buying a 20-trip pass and a 25-trip pass and it can save you up to £20.
Alternatively, travellers on a one-year working holiday visa can get a lot of value out of the Unlimited Naked Passport bus pass, which lets you make as many bus trips as you can handle within a one-year period all for less than $600.
The Naked Passport passes are really good value, especially when a one-year unlimited pass costs around the same as two weeks of car rental; and if you rented a car you would still be up for fuel, insurance excess and parking.
What are the cheapest days to travel?
July 29th, 2008 by Tim Uden
It is commonplace for airlines to use a yield management pricing structure and other forms of transport such as buses and trains are also starting to use this pricing system. Basically this means that the advertised prices refer to the cheapest seats, which sell out first; leaving the more expensive seats for those who don’t book ahead. In other words busier travel times are more expensive than off-peak times unless you book well in advance.
Naked Bus (a New Zealand-based low-cost intercity bus operator) reveals that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are generally the cheapest days to travel as there are fewer other people travelling on these days and less competition for the cheapest seats.
Obviously the cheapest days and more expensive days to travel depend on the mode of transport and whether it is a leisure or business destination; but in most cases Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the cheapest days to travel.
Travel to weekend break destinations will be more expensive on Friday nights, Saturday mornings, Sunday nights and early Monday mornings and air travel to business destinations usually costs more early morning and in the evening, but is often cheaper around midday (especially midweek).
You’ll save money by booking well in advance, but often it is difficult to book too far in advance especially if you want to keep an element of spontaneity. However it always pays to be flexible with your travel days and check a couple of days either side of your planned travel day to ensure you don’t miss out of a bargain.
Megabus discontinue their Phoenix and Tempe to Los Angeles service
January 7th, 2008 by Tim Uden
It’s the end of cheap LA to Phoenix bus fares. As of today, Megabus will no longer be operating the Los Angeles to Tempe and Phoenix bus route.
Aparently not enough people travelled on this route to make it viable for Megabus. I would have expected it to be quite popular. With fares starting at $1.50 for the seven-hour bus ride it was a great deal. However the Phoenix/Tempe area isn’t such a popular travel destination and the bus isn’t the most popular way to travel in the Southwest USA.
50% off Greyhound Australia’s west coast fares
December 18th, 2007 by Tim Uden
Competition among buses, trains and airlines on Australia’s east coast has meant that this has always been a much cheaper place to travel than the west coast. However Greyhound Australia have a special running until 31 March 2008 that gives you a 50% discount off bus fares between Perth and Darwin.
There are a few conditions: you can’t have any further discounts (ie. no HI/YHA discount); there are no refunds or changes permitted and the special isn’t available on shuttle services connecting the main west coast (Perth-Darwin) route to Kalbarri, Monkey Mia, Coral Bay or Exmouth.
Naked Bus – the Ryanair of New Zealand bus companies
December 7th, 2007 by Tim Uden
Naked Bus is a year-old bus operator with a nationwide network of bus services to most destinations in New Zealand. What makes Naked Bus a good deal is that they – like Megabus in the UK and USA – operate with a yield-management pricing system just like budget airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair. So basically you can ride the bus around New Zealand with prices starting at $1 per trip (plus a 75c booking fee) as long as you book far enough in advance. Although booking everything so far in advance can kill the spontanious carefree spirit of independent travel, the cost savings make it a real bargain.
I rode the Naked Bus from Christchurch to Blenheim (about a six-hour trip) and overall it was a good experience and I would certainly consider travelling with Naked Bus again. It was just a crappy old minibus, but newer full-size coaches operate on many routes. I paid $24 for the trip, but there were $1 fares available if I wanted to take a bus later in the day, although I was on a tight schedule so I paid extra to leave on the early bus.
One very long bus ride
September 15th, 2007 by Tim Uden
Today the first Oz-Bus service departed from London en route to Sydney.
It’s not exactly cheap at GBP £3750 London-Sydney or AUD $9000 Sydney-London, but you do get to travel through some amazing places for 12 weeks and accommodation is included. I am sure it will be a fantastic trip and an experience of a lifetime.
Oz-Bus claim to be the first London-Sydney regular bus service but let’s set one thing straight; this is not a scheduled bus service. It’s a tour! Accommodation is provided in tents en route and in Iran and Pakistan you are provided accommodation in hotels. It’s not a service for independent travellers because there is nothing independent about being told where to go and where to stay.
I’m not saying that it won’t be a great trip. Of course it will, but it would be much more of an adventure doing the same route on your own and it will be a lot cheaper to do it yourself.
Travelling on the Oz Bus will cost over GBP £312 or AUD $750 a week and that is going through some of the cheapest countries in the world and sleeping in a tent. You can spend less that that travelling in Scandinavia with a 1st class rail pass and sleeping in very nice hostels! For a tour it is a reasonable price but for a bus ticket it is overpriced. Overland travel through Asia on local buses should be a lot cheaper than this.
What I would really like to see is a proper overland bus service for independent travellers where you can choose where to stay en route and hop on and off the bus as you feel like it knowing that you can hop on another bus the next day. Something like a trans-Asian bus version of a Eurail or Interrail pass. It wouldn’t be too difficult for a travel company to work out a deal with bus companies in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand and Malaysia and create a proper Asian bus pass.
15% off Greyhound Australia Kilometre Passes
September 9th, 2007 by Tim Uden
Greyhound Australia have dropped the prices of their Kilometre Passes (between 5,000km and 20,000km) by 15% until the end of 2007.
This special is available for both Adult and Concession Passes.
For example the 5,000km Concession fare was $692, NOW $588, saving of $104! The 15,000km Concession fare was $1789, NOW $1521, saving of $268!