Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
companies such as 'City Sightseeing' operating in many cities across the world.
They offer regular hop-on-hop-off services between visitor attractions at urban
destinations. There has also been a growth in park and ride services, which
were developed originally to ease congestion at popular destinations such as
Niagara Falls in the USA and in historic cities such as Chester and Winchester
in the UK (Meek et al, 2009; Wall and McDonald, 2007). There are fewer
park and ride services feeding into rural destinations such as the Igel bus in
the Bavarian National Park in Germany, where a park and ride service fits into
a wider integrated network ideally suited for slow travel (Gronau and
Kagermeier, 2007). People are also more willing to use buses to access large-
scale events such as the Olympic Games (Hensher and Brewer, 2002). At the
Sydney Olympics, use of buses was higher than predicted (Hensher and
Brewer, 2002), and such situations can provide an opportunity for people who
otherwise would not use buses to engage.
There has been a limited analysis of the coach tour experience; it has been
characterized as a passive travel option with fixed itineraries (Becken and
Gnoth, 2004; Dean, 1993). Such itineraries, however, might not be very
relaxing, as many coach tours attempt to include visits to numerous tourism
icons (Baloglu and Shoemaker, 2001). Coach tours are 'frequently assumed
to involve the seamless visual consumption of spectacle within an “air-
conditioned bubble” that limits sensory and experiential diversity' (Edensor
and Holloway, 2008, p487).
However, this might not always be the case. Exploratory research under-
taken by Dickinson (2009) suggests that coach tourists are much more actively
co-producing the experience; this corroborates findings in relation to the
Shropshire Hills Shuttles study (Institute of Transport and Tourism, 2008).
This also reinforces, to some extent, previous market indicators that the core
market for coaches is becoming more adventurous and thus will have an
appeal to younger age groups (Mintel, 2009a). It also depends on the nature
of the tour. There is, for example, an increasing backpacker coach travel
market, such as Busabout in Europe and Greyhound in the USA, which is
targeting the 15-24 age group (Mintel, 2004). There is also the OZ bus from
Europe to Australia, which takes 13 weeks to complete, and is positioned as
a 'trip of a lifetime' for backpackers. There are also a range of backpacker
buses in Australia and New Zealand that have a considerable appeal to
younger markets.
The scale and scope
Use of the bus and coach is ubiquitous, and whilst it is difficult to offer a
global estimate, the following figures provide an idea of the scale of bus use
for everyday travel. The International Association of Public Transport (2009)
estimate that 60 billion passenger journeys were made in 2008 in the enlarged
European Union (EU27 countries), and the trend reflects a small increase in
demand. The Association estimates that 10 per cent of all trips are made for
leisure or tourism purposes in relation to rural services; this is supported by
evidence from the Tourism on Board study in the UK.
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