Those of you who regularly follow my blog will know that we had to cancel our annual holiday in Thailand this year due to Chris having to stay in England to look after her mum (who is due out of hospital on Monday). As our full tour programme starts on 25th April it was not looking much like we would get a break but I took the decision that we have to get some time off together and booked a week in Lanzarote leaving on Thursday – not Thailand but at least it should be warm! We will therefore not have our weekend tours next weekend and if you were thinking of booking - my apologies – we hope you understand!
It has been a crazy week at home trying to get the 1001 things that needed doing done including new brochures, getting our new coach finished and and …….! We have also been talking to some our accommodation providers and we have secured some great accommodation for this years package tours, there has never been a better time to book rooms inIreland, we have therefore managed to keep our prices at last years’ level – some feat in today’s business climate! We often think we are too cheap and we do get e.mails confirming what is included, I often feel people cannot believe our prices compared to other comparable tours. As you might realise we are so competitive because we operate our own vehicles and we never offer commission to third parties, look at our competitors and see how many travel sites and supposedly impartial review sites include their products, why do you think that is?
Anyhow despite the lack of holidays we are spoiling for a fight and now have the vehicles, itineraries and pricing to meet the big boys head on and believe me after 11 years we are still spoiling for a fight!
I don’t know if I mentioned this but I’am currently re reading a book called “Buses under fire” which tells stories of the people involved in operating the bus service in Ulster during the troubles and it makes fascinating if a little disturbing reading. One of the great characters was the Managing Director of Ulsterbus and later Belfast Citybus a gentleman called Werner Huebeck who as you may gather was German born, Mr Huebeck was an utterly formidable person and took many hard decisions during that difficult time and is probably best known in transport folklore for removing bombs and suspect packages from buses himself and largely refusing the assistance of the British Army, this sounds rather dramatic but reading between the lines I believe he was not a great maverick but a meticulously calculated risk taker and he knew precisely what he was doing! Also Werner had a unique way of doing business when dealing with both sides of the troubles he would never do deals or favours and because of this he has always said that he had the upper hand in any negotiations as he had what he terms the “moral superiority”.
I truly believe that our growth has been truly organic and built solely on the strength of our commitment and the quality of our product, we were never in this business or indeed this country before and so have never been able to call in favours and connections, indeed it could be said that we have a moral superiority that many of our competitors could never have – just a thought!
I’am even having a holiday from Blogging until I get back but be warned I may come back from my break with even more crazy thoughts in fact there is one burning in my head right now – if you think that I’am tour mad you could be right – watch this space!!! By the way, no Elbow quote this week – I think I have rambled on enough!
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