Coach tours hit the road again across NZ, despite Covid-19 pandemic
Friday, 4 September 2020
When Covid-19 cheated him out of a pre-university gap year in the United Kingdom, Ashburton dairy farmworker Daniel Bishop took a three-week backpacker bus tour around New Zealand.
Fellow Kiwi passenger Amy Law had visited 43 countries but the Stray Travel trip in June was the first time she had been to Abel Tasman National Park, Franz Josef Glacier, Wanaka, Queenstown, Tekapo, Aoraki Mt Cook, and Kaikoura.
Bishop and Law both rated the tour as the experience of a lifetime, and bus companies are desperately hoping to find more customers like them.
Last year coach tours carried 713,510 international visitors, and the border closure is felt keenly by the hotels, cafes, farms, private gardens and other tourist attractions that featured on their itineraries.
**READ MORE:
* Maori tourism operators say Covid-19 'like a really long tangi'
* Cut price travel deals galore, but tourism still faces a grim winter
**
Law readily admits she has the pandemic to thank for seeing so much of her own country because it turned a quick trip home from Britain for a family wedding into a five-month stay.
Now back in London where she works for a communications' agency, the 30-year-old is stoked to have finally ticked off places she had heard foreign travellers rave about.
“It is quite embarrassing when someone from Germany has seen far more of your country than you have.
“It just blows my mind that as Kiwis we spend so much time and money travelling to the ends of the Earth for our overseas experience, and it is like a rite of passage for us do a Contiki or TopDeck bus tour, but we don’t prioritise doing the same in our own country.”
Stray Travel and competitor Kiwi Experience are tentatively hitting the road again over the coming weeks with small group tours targeting young New Zealanders.
Although masks are not compulsory on tour buses, they will be provided along with copious quantities of hand sanitiser and strict cleaning regimes.
Stray chief executive Brett Hudson says persuading Kiwis to hop on a bus for a “roady” may be “a bridge too far” but he is hoping local and international students will give it a go.
He notes many youngsters don’t have driver’s licences, plus they are big on sustainability, “and that is not getting in a car and driving around the country with one or two people”.
Bishop loved the social side of group travel, not having to get behind the wheel nursing a hangover after a big night out, and the chance to learn something new from the driver guide who pre-ordered their Fergburgers in Queenstown so they did not have to queue after a long day at Milford Sound.
Growing up in Ashburton and going to boarding school in Christchurch, Bishop had little exposure to Māori culture and he says the hangi and other cultural experiences at Kohutapu Lodge near Murupara were a highlight. “I had never heard of Murupara.”
Sleeper bus tours are also making an appearance after Incognito Nightliners’ owner David Watt switched from transporting entertainers, film crews and private groups, to selling weekend trips to vineyards.
His luxury double-decker has 12 “cribs” with personal video screens, an upstairs observation lounge, shower and toilet facilities, and a driver-cum-chef to prepare meals.
Watt is after more “mature” customers and he is booked up until January. “I am not looking for young people who get totally trashed, that is why I have priced it at $320. It filters out the rubbish.”
Adventure South has chartered Watt’s bus for week-long trail running tours around South Island scenic spots, guided by seasoned runner Mal Law, and the first two trips ($2890 per person) filled up in days.
Although targeting the domestic market is new for some tour operators, others have been doing it for decades.
Ena Hutchinson started MoaTrek backpacker tours in 1971, later selling out to Contiki.
She went on to set up Moa Tours in the late 1990s for those aged 50-plus and, pre-Covid, about 40 per cent of passengers were New Zealanders.
Managing director Miles Clark, Hutchinson's son, says the business can’t operate at level 2 because carrying 10 customers instead of 18 is uneconomic but, all going well Covid-wise, it will run about 80 tours from October to the end of April.
A regional focus is the trick to attracting Kiwis, and prices include all travel, accommodation, meals and entry to attractions.
“It is akin to being on a cruise ship, so people don’t have to worry about anything when they step aboard.
“Lots of the time we have lunches in amazing gardens with locals in Canterbury or Taranaki, and that is what clients come back talking about, not the hotels they stayed in,” says Clark.
Aucklander Nan Patterson is a Moa Tour veteran. Since the death of her husband a decade ago, the 82-year-old former flight steward has done 24 bus trips from Cape Reinga to Stewart Island and is busy planning her next one.
She is not remotely concerned about the risks of catching Covid. “I couldn’t give a stuff … I am getting a bit cross being told what to do.”
Fellow travellers are mostly over 70 and pretty fit. “They all gallop around and generally have a good sense of humour. I have found them to be very sociable, very nice people.”
But for tour companies that catered largely for international visitors, going “100 per cent local” is difficult and it is no exaggeration to say that Covid-19 has decimated this segment of the industry.
Bus and Coach Association chief executive Pim Boren estimates half a dozen of his 200 tour coach company members have closed permanently and at least 70 per cent are in hibernation.
Many of their 1800 drivers are jobless and most of their 1250 coaches are parked up until the borders reopen.
“An awful lot of our tour coach companies targeted one market like China or India.”
Hiring small buses and shuttles with or without driver guides was increasingly popular with larger overseas family groups, and Gary Rhodes’ rental company became a casualty when the pandemic brought bookings to a grinding halt.
When he could not keep up with finance payments, his fleet of 107 vehicles was repossessed and sold off.
“To walk away with nothing was tough and will be for years. It is not a good feeling … all my retirement funds have gone down the gurgler.”
George Oliver’s Royale Coachlines relied heavily on cruise ship work out of Tauranga, ferrying passengers to Rotorua and Hobbiton.
His shuttle bus service to Auckland Airport sometimes carried 200 people a day. “We get excited if we do 10 now.”
Leopard Coachlines marks its 50th anniversary this year but owner Brent Early says there is not much to celebrate. “It has turned into hanging on for grim death.”
His 60 coaches did contract tours for inbound tour operators and he has laid off 115 staff, some of whom had been with him for 25 years.
New 5-star coaches cost $600,000 and Early says they need to be on the road 250 days a year to make it a viable business. “We have had zero income since March.”
John Gregory’s Terra Nova Coach Tours specialised in the German market and the pandemic led him to create a new brand aimed at New Zealanders.
Travel agents were enthusiastic, he was about to market through retirement villages and things were looking good until Covid-19 came back.
Retirement villages reverted to level 4 restrictions, halting sales visits, and the risk of level 2 social distancing continuing saw tours planned for October and November pushed out until next year.
“It is hugely depressing, we did everything [Tourism Minister] Kelvin Davis told us to do and it was all wiped out in a few days. The on-going impact is many months, not two weeks.”
Boren is furious about the lack of Government help for the industry, claiming the wage subsidy was useless for coach tour companies forced to lay off staff because they had no work.
The Government will guarantee bank loans of up to $5 million to the tune of 80 per cent and Boren wants that extended to the finance companies most bus companies use to fund their fleets.
“The reason there is no uptake [of the loan offer] is mostly because the banks will not go anywhere near anyone who is a tourism operator at the moment.”
As for selling off surplus tour coaches, Boren says prices are ridiculously low. “You would have to be desperate to sell a bus when you know it will get 50 per cent of its value.”
Kiwi Bus Builders in Tauranga would normally expect to produce 50 tour coaches a year.
“This year we are building two and the operators don’t even want them,” says managing director Richard Drummond
Fortunately urban buses require regular refurbishment and the company is also working on rubbish trucks and road cone carriers.
For all the gloom, Early has confidence that, far from being a “sunset” business, coach tours will once again be the glue that holds much of the tourism industry together.
“There is a large group of people that want to be taken care of and don’t want the stress of driving, and they like being part of a group because it is quite social, and they meet new friends.”
Backpackers used to make up about 10 per cent of our international visitors, and Kiwi Experience chief executive Tim Loxton is convinced they will return.
“We were still getting strong bookings in March until people literally could not travel. It is an extremely resilient market and as soon as they are able, they will be back.”