February 26 2021
Colin Duncan, Director of Dunwood Travel, writes about the importance of communication, raising the profile of the coach industry, and his hopes for a brighter future.
Like many other coach & tour operators based in the UK Dunwood have experienced a significant decrease in coach-inclusive UK holiday business over the past 12 months and the pandemic has devastated our industry. However the really positive news and the light at the end of the tunnel hopefully for us all has now followed the Government announcements of the roadmap out of the pandemic.
Throughout the pandemic period we have endeavoured to keep all channels of communication open with our group holiday organisers/leaders, individual clients and very importantly our accommodation partners and suppliers. This course of action helped greatly and we were in a position to operate 133 tours between the middle of July and the end of October, and we were able to get up and running much faster than if our channels of communication had not been so open.
We knew it was important to ensure passenger confidence and safety, so we made sure that strict safety practises were in place both on our coaches and at the chosen holiday venues. It was great to see so many passengers were eager to travel and it was a fantastic feeling to see the wheels turning on our coaches once again.
I have tried to use all media channels to highlight the plight of UK Tourism industry throughout the pandemic and raise the profile of coach operators wherever possible. This resulted in two appearances on BBC Midlands Today TV and several interviews on radio stations throughout the whole West Midlands area. The presenters were very supportive of our industry and it was a great opportunity to highlight that demand for coach travel will return.
Now, we are looking forward to our first Dunwood tours commencing on the 17/05/21. Bookings since the roadmap announcement have completely gone through the roof which could very well lead to us increasing our accommodation capacity over the Summer, Autumn and Winter months, and myself and everyone at Dunwood look forward to welcoming passengers back on board.
The future for our industry is now solidly back on track and looking and feeling more positive than it has done for a very long time, so keep your heads high everyone and let’s all look forward to much better things to come.