Aircoach Dublin-Cork express

bk wrote: »

I think they might look at getting one or two over-decker or double decker immediately with the Cork service being so busy at peak time.

They would need to attract high thousands of extra passengers on the capacity provided by the deckers over the course of the year to make that pay since there would need to be enough extra revenue to cover the full leasing cost of the company. That wound involve around 10,000 extra passengers per year for a couple of coaches just for the coach lease investment to break even.

That is a tall order bearing on mind such coach would only be able to add 24 seats or so over the Jonckheere it would replace and would only be able to operate a couple of peak services a day where capacity may be needed as the other ones would be off-peak.

If they wait until the leases are up the difference to the cost base becomes the difference between the cost of leasing the old coach and the new coach, adding something on it's own means the whole cost of that vehicle is added to the cost base.

They seem to be putting on two or even three coaches at peak times on this route. Might make sense to save driver wages by using a new over-decker or double decker.

Driver wages would not be a huge factor in this, the leasing costs would be a far bigger factor, there would be a point where this ceased to be yes, but I don' think Aircoach are near this yet.

The best way to do it right now is to wait it out, I can't see any coaches coming in, unless the company gets some investment, raises some money by asset sales or frees up budget by the ending of leases of existing coaches.

The Limerick run is a non starter, simply because again it will be heavily loss making at the start like any service is and the business really couldn't sustain another service like that at the moment. They need to reduce losses and that will involve taking no risks that could increase them.

bk wrote: »

Of course currins_02 description compares the Vanhools to the Volvo 9700's, while I was originally talking about the Aircoach Jonckheeres. Perhaps the Joncks are much more fuel efficient then the Volvo 9700's are, so perhaps there would be less benefit in terms of fuel savings for Aircoach in moving to a newer coach.

The Jonck's are Volvo based too.

I've been on that 2005 Setra once, it's basically from the Setra 300 generation (introduced in 1993) and is one of the last ever built since this generation was phased out a few months later after the 400 series had really established itself.

The 2004 Blue Setras are of a higher standard and more modern, coming from the 400 series that was launched in 2002, so despite the white Setra being a younger coach, it's from an older generation.

It started off in Aircoach livery upon being new:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49870858@N08/6255436408/in/photolist-awLKiS-9AFxRj-99H6zB-bVUrYy

Soon after it spent a multi-year stint doing contract work for Citylink:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49870858@N08/5643331520/in/photolist-9AFxRj-99H6zB

It then came back to Aircoach and was again repainted:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41133601@N03/6841717789/in/photolist-bqzAkx-awLKiS

Generally it's not about passenger numbers, it's about yields,. and I'd say that may well be that GoBe increased their prices from their default level to improve the yields as on the original timetable at €10 a pop and being quite empty and running more regular they had to be losing quite a bit per journey.

To pay for reverting the fare back to €10 would require a 20% lift in passenger numbers across the board, or 33% to go to €9 or they'll end up worse off than they are now and I'd say they took a bit hit in the first few months of the service. To increase the timetable would require an even bigger uplift

The trouble is with hindsight that GoBe made some fundamental mistakes in the early life of this service. I'm not convinced their pricing was right when it came out (it was too low and played right into Aircoach's hands) and their branding and marketing was quite poor and didn't exploit Aircoach's weaknesses and they took far too long to launch and allowed Aircoach to grab too much of the market.

bk wrote: »

However if Aircoach can fill three coaches between 8 and 9 (almost 150 passengers) and GoBE can't even get 20 passengers at the same time frame, then they are still doing something fundamentally wrong.

As I said it all goes back to the initial launch.

Of course as you say, if they drop prices, they need to increase passenger numbers to make up the difference. But I find it hard to imagine that they wouldn't double the number of passengers on the 8:30 if they charged the same price as Aircoach.

But how are they going to double the number of passengers? They have to poach passengers from either the private car, Bus Eireann (very little passengers to be had there, Aircoach or Irish Rail (Who are more competitive now)

I don't see why GoBE couldn't increase their yield to 40 or even 50 at 8:30 leaving Aircoach with about 100+ at 8 or 9, thus negating Aircoaches need to put on an extra coach.

For me there are three major problems with GoBE and what has effectively left them in second place on this route, and all of them could have been avoided with different actions, although hindsight is a wonderful thing, one of them was a gamble that didn't pay off, another was likely down to funding (but should have been resolved quicker), and another one was down to pure sloppiness.

First Factor: Slow Off the Blocks
Many of us on here knew that they had a license a good while before Aircoach even launched their service. All of this time allowed Aircoach to plan a service, launch and build the market. Don't forget Aircoach already had an advantage even if they both launched the same time since they already had a good number of customers on the existing service. Even if GoBe launched at the same time as Aircoach this would have been at a disadvantage because of this.

Even months after Aircoach launching and steady passengers growth there was no sign of a launch from GoBE. And every week that passed, Aircoach attracted more and more passengers which meant that it would get tougher and tougher for any new entrant to the market to try and convince some of those passengers to switch to a service, since most of those passengers would have been the easiest to perhaps convince to switch from other modes of transport since they were the ones that switched first. Aircoach got most of that market.

However a few months later when Aircoach was starting to get large numbers on a number of it's services, bring in toilet equipped coaches and advertising was turned up a notch, we heard that GoBe were eventually going to launch with a link up with Bus Eireann. The use of bus stations we thought would be a key perk, as would the fact toilets were on every coach, however by this point in time, Aircoach had already started to address this point.

Second Factor: The Price (Which directly influences service viability)
I honestly believe GoBus went too low from the off. They didn't expect that Aircoach would match them for price. If Aircoach didn't match them on the price this would have been a masterstroke. If Aircoach did beat the price then this would have backfired to a large degree for GoBus. And the later is exactly what happened.

Put simply, Aircoach could afford to undercut GoBe by a euro since they were getting a large enough number of passengers on the service to still make it pay even with the price reduction since by the time GoBe entered the market, Aircoach had already attracted a large number of passengers to their service. This would also make it harder for the new GoBE service to get off the ground as they are still a euro more expensive on price, despite the fact they attempted to vastly undercut Aircoach in order to win customers.

It's likely that Aircoach would have undercut GoBe whatever price they went in for, however how low they would go was probably always going to be determined by how low GoBe went. So for example if GoBe went for €12 and €21 return, this would have still been cheaper than Aircoach, Aircoach would most likely have gone for €11 single and €20 return, which would aid the yields for both companies. But clearly the problem is now that due to the sheer volume differences between companies, GoBe couldn't sustain the low prices, and now has a bigger difference between itself and it's competitor because of that.

Some people argue that GoBe should cut now back to €8 single promotional fare. But what would stop Aircoach going to €7? Aircoach going to €7 would harm GoBe a lot more than it would harm Aircoach, once again simply down to the sheer volume of passengers. Now I'd say we may well be going to below cost pricing if things got must lower, but my point is that despite their difficulties, I think to many of us it was kind of obvious that Aircoach would react to the new pricing by GoBe, and I honestly believe they should have not gone as cheap as they did and working into their fare strategy that this would most likely happen.

The pricing strategy from GoBe was brave. However the prices they used were not effective when they were brought to market simply because of the fact that by the time they came to market, Aircoach had already built up a loyal following of users of their service and were in a position where they had enough users to be able to counter this.

Third Factor: Tame Launch (Ties in with first factor)
Now fares are an issue and they didn't help the financial yields for the service, but generally this is not directly related to the number of passengers being carried, since whatever happened with the fare strategy it's likely that Aircoach would have been cheaper anyway, aided by the much earlier launch, so this would have done little to change each companies market share.

However - had GoBe brought in their €10 price before Aircoach had built up passenger numbers, then this could have been much more effective, since Aircoach may not have built up the volume of passengers to be able to undercut them quite so easily without taking some huge risks. This would almost certainly have led to there not being the price gap between the two operators there is now, and would have given GoBe a bigger share of the market.

However, that is not the only thing that could have been exploited better ot help GoBe's share of the market. Toilets is a second one. For the first few months of the service Aircoach not only didn't have the high volume of passengers, they had no vehicles with toilets. Honestly you'd think that these are two weaknesses that GoBE could exploit, running head to head with a service that is not yet established and being able to offer something the competition did not, particularly when you look at the fierce debate over toilets in this thread at the time. They didn't launch, and therefore did not make the most of this weakness. Over the next few months Aircoach both grew the toilet equipped coaches and grew passenger numbers. Missed Opportunity.

So then GoBe did launch. They still had an advantage in that they had all coaches with toilets, but at this point Aircoach had built up a large number of passengers. They unveiled a coach in an eye catching livery, advertising the service and all it's benefits advertising the fares etc. However for the first three-four months they liveried just one coach with the others seemingly random selection of liveries with just a GoBe sticker stuck on them. Aircoach at this point had no coaches advertising the service. So Aircoach responded a few weeks later by adding decals to 7 coaches advertising "Dublin to Cork Express from €9 single". The Aircoach tactic was simple, but got the job done. Thanks to the city center location of the coach stop, such buses would have been seen by lots of people with such slogan on.

But the question I ask, is that why didn't GoBe have every coach in livery from day one, with large letters boasting all of the benefits it offered, along with "Toilets on every coach" and instead used a seemingly random variety of vehicles on the route. Once again, a weakness of the Aircoach service on the route was not exploited as it should have been by GoBe which led to less passengers than they could have had. Now all vehicles are in livery since the timetable cuts, however now the prices have gone up, Aircoach have a lot of the market and it's a little bit too late as they are firmly in second place.

In Summary:
I don't think GoBe are a dead duck - far from it, but they really allowed Aircoach to gain too much of a head start on passenger numbers and some would say that when Aircoach had no coaches with toilets that would have been a great time to capitalize on a service that is just finding it's feet and had a shortcoming that could be exploited. However they sat back, didn't launch at the optimal time, and whilst the fare strategy may have been a good one if the service launched around the same time of the Aircoach service, such strategy in my book played right into Aircoach's hands and only served to diminish GoBe's own revenue.

I'd like to see two strong operators on this route offering a good service between them and the balance is possibly too tilted in favour of Aircoach at the moment for my liking as a consumer but GoBe seriously need to up their game in order to do that at the moment.

bk wrote: »

Clearly the big advertising campaign that they had with BE over the past few months has failed, so what now?

Like the other things, the big advertising campaign I feel was too late. It would have made a bigger impact if it happened far earlier than it did. Aircoach already did one on Facebook months earlier advertising pretty much the same thing.

When almost 20 people get left behind by the 8am Aircoach and the majority of them buy a ticket from the 8am Aircoach driver and dutifully stand on the quays waiting for the 9am Aircoach

So he actually sold tickets for the next service? And there are a large number of people of whom all are paying walk up fares who are waiting for an hour for the next one? That is quite strange!

While I agree that GoBE can't and shouldn't try to undercut Aircoach on price, I do think the price difference is too large. I think €10 single online, €11 single walk up would go a long way to attracting over some of those Aircoach passengers. €1 extra seems reasonable for newer coach, that are often less crowded and have a guaranteed toilet *

Well this is the problem they have now which is caused by the initial way that fares were structured. However if I am right a large number of those GoBe passengers are paying walk up and TVM fares. If they reduce the walk up fare to €11 from the €17 it is now, that is going o put a large dent in the financial yields. And yields are the most important thing. Are they going to attract enough customers to make up that difference? It's borderline at best, so still doesn't help the current situations.

I also think the GoBE service would be very attractive to many Irish Rail passengers, but unfortunately I don't see GoBE targeting them, due to their relationship with CIE.

I don't think they'll totally shy away from targeting rail passengers completely but they certainly won't target them in a direct way with something like "SAVE x by taking the bus instead of the train" for the reasons you outline, but they're not going to go out their way to avoid them.

Part of the problem I think is also the new once every two hours schedule. I think people like the idea that if you just miss the Aircoach, you only have an hour to wait for the next one. Waiting two hours for the next GoBE isn't as attractive.

I agree the schedule is not idea. But the facts were it's better to have a service every two hours that is breaking even or making a small profit at 25 passengers on average, than have two services with 15 on each that are both losing money running every hour.

The only way they can change this is by improving the yields by stealing some passengers back from Aircoach in quite a high number, targeting the train (which they won't do) or getting passengers from the car however it's hard to see them doing this. Since price is not an option, since Aircoach will just reduce theirs, thereby reducing GoBe's yields even more they have to think up some other way.

The fundamental problem GoBe face is now, because of their late launch most of the captive market has already been absorbed by Aircoach, whereas if they launched earlier, there'd be more general people to grab who could be persuaded. Now most of them are with the opposition and they have to find some way of getting passengers to move across.

The other crazy thing is that every Friday Aircoach totally fill their 3,4,5 and 6 pm service from Dublin to Cork and even put on a second coach at 6pm. Now while GoBE also fill their 4:30pm service, I think it is crazy they don't also do a 3:30 and 5:30 on Friday, I'm certain they would fill those coaches too. GoBus to Galway does have extra services on a Friday and Sunday for peak demand, so why not GoBE?

The problem is you have to factor in the return trip as well for the vehicle to get back to base. So any good loadings could be more than wiped out by an empty bus travelling back with a driver in it, since the margins I cannot imagine are very big on this route. Again GoBe could fill the coaches, but they need to attract passengers from Aircoach to do this,

This is now their biggest problem, the competition has the passengers and they need to get them and trying to fight on price has already put them in situation that is far from ideal. So they need to find some way to change that, without having a negative effect on yields, since I'd suspect poor yields and services that were losing money was why they upped the prices and cut the schedule in the first place.

bk wrote: »

Yup, I'd say it was about 80% full with online bookings and interestingly looking at the almost completely full luggage bay I'd say most where heading to the airport, so even more money for Aircoach. He next took one or two return ticket holders who were there and then sold a few tickets to fill the coach. Once full, he then offered to sell tickets for the next 9am coach for the 15 to 20 people remaining and most people took this up!

That is a good way to do boarding, the order in my opinion should always be people booked on the coach, followed by people who are booked for the day but on another coach, then return tickets, then single tickets in that order. However I've seen that not all drivers do that. Selling the tickets for the next service is no doubt a (sensible) commercial move by Aircoach to ensure that people don't go over the road and use the opposition! Clever business tactics there a well as giving you priority on the next coach.

I'd say roughly half were walk up, but only because they couldn't get on the Aircoach. What I'm thinking is they might get more of the walk ups from the full Aircoach services if the prices were cheaper.

But if this is happening on a regular basis even with half a dozen passengers, and making up a small but decent percentage of some of those GoBe Coaches, it still is going to require an additional three passengers per coach just to maintain existing yields, let alone improve them by cutting the price by €6It also gives less of an incentive to buy online when there is only a €1 reduction, which doesn't help service planning, disappointed customers who are then turned away, or Jim Burke who was against online sales at first from what we've read.

But Aircoach seem to have no problem doing this, frequently laying on an extra coach at peak times, for instance Friday at 6pm or today at 9pm. Surely these coaches end up running back empty too.

Aircoach have a depot at both ends whereas GoBe only have a depot in Cork. They have a small number of spare coaches at each depot now and they can drive a coach from one end to another and send a driver back on a scheduled service on one of the seats without needing to take the extra coach. Of course a balance needs to be kept to keep the right number of spares at each location, but it gives them a much greater flexibility than someone who has all drivers and coaches based at one end.

As in stands, trying to undercut Aircoach didn't work, big advertising campaign didn't work, so what will work?

Well the ones that stick out are some kind of PR stunt that gets them in the news, try and get themselves featured in high profile places that will get the word out, competitions to win tickets or some kind of mass advertising. I know it's not terribly great things I'm suggesting. The other thing they need to do is make sure they take advantage of any weakness that Aircoach may show in the future, if a chance to do that does present itself.

I actually wasn't very impressed with the wraps Aircoach did on their coaches, first of all I think the GoBE coaches are much nicer looking and more noticeable then the blue Aircoach coaches. Also Aircoach only wrapped a few coaches, most of which you rarely see nowadays, in particular at peak times.

The wraps Aircoach did were basic indeed but they were more effective in the early days to to the sheer number of them. GoBe only had one coach in livery for the first couple of months of the service, then joined by a second one. What's more, it did not even mention the price on The GoBe coach. GoBe should have had every coach liveried for starting day.

Seven coaches were wrapped and six still are, sure they are basic with just that one line of text on each side and on the back. But they had seven of them out there when GoBe had one and because of the sheer number of coaches that are out there the Aircoach livery was more effective. Now if GoBe had every coach out there in livery they'd have won hands down, but they didn't.

Whatever about the merits of the styling or the branding, and I agree the GoBe one is better, having seven coaches out there with a basic, clear message that does what it says on a tin, and goes through busy areas is better than a great message and branding that is only on one coach that doesn't even pick up from the same city center locations which are high of potential passengers.

Again it all comes back to what I said earlier. It's all very well having all the coaches in the world liveried in great livery now (and there is still the odd coach going around in plain white), but they didn't when it mattered most, which was the early months of the service when there was a large untapped market.

BenShermin wrote: »

If GoBÉ collapse it would destroy the route IMO. Aircoach's only competition then would be Irish Rail. With the amount of loyal customers Aircoach have there's nothing stopping them from having a restrictive and expensive yield management fare system on this route if there's no other viable bus competition.

Generally though Aircoach have not been the kind of company to go for lots of fare hikes and abuse their position they've only had three price increases since 2005, so that is pretty good going compared to some operators both here and abroad who seem to hike their prices up almost every year.

I would agree however that we wouldn't have the €9/€10 single fares if it wasn't for competition though and that can only be a good thing, but I still can't help thinking that in an ideal world both operators would like to see the prices a couple of euro or so higher, but as stated earlier GoBus caused the current level of pricing.

As a regular user of GoBÉ it's actually frustrating to see a company that operates better, more comfortable buses imo doing so bad against Aircoach who operate sub-standard buses many of which get delayed at Urlingford because they're toiletless.

I wouldn't necessary agree with that, since it's far less straight forwarded than that. The Sub standard Aircoach vehicles are the toilet equipped ones, which are very tight for leg-room. Ironically the non sub-standard vehicles with the most leg-room are the ones that do not have toilets, so whilst I'd agree that some are toilet-less and sub-standard, none of the coaches are both in my opinion.

It is true that GoBus certainly offers a more consistent experience since all their vehicles have toilets and are of a similar standard to each other. The experience with Aircoach varies, you can get a very comfortable coach that is better than GoBe can offer without a toilet, or a coach that falls far short of what GoBe can offer with a toilet. So with Aircoach it is a bit of a lottery whereas GoBe have a better all-round vehicle.

At the end of the day I'd hate to see Go Bus fail on this route. It's improved my life immensely in the last year and I now see my family in Cork more often than I ever had and in similar comfort (and cheaper) to the train.

I'd hate to see them go too, since competition always reduces prices, increases customer awareness of the service, and keeps operators on their toes and therefore providing a better service. A monopoly is never good for anyone, but despite the fact GoBe have done some good things, I still can't help they could have played their cards in the past a little different.

Dublin Bus have a route from Heuston to Dublin Airport, but it takes a very round the houses way of getting there and is an extra €6 single or €10 return since the old 747 and 748 routes are now combined. Previous to this the 748 from Heuston was much more direct.

Can't help thinkt hat they are missing a trick by not offering a through ticket to Dublin Airport at a slightly reduced price for the bus, which would improve dwell time at Heuston to for services leaving.