Staffordshire coach operator gearing up for year ahead with optimism
After a year of furlough, uncertainty and losing £1.5 million, one coach tour operator today spoke of his confidence for the months ahead.
Cheslyn Hay-based coach tour operator Parrys International has launched its 2021 holiday brochure five months later than usual due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Now with the Government's roadmap and the vaccine roll out the company has planned for the coaches to be back on the road from May 17 when hotels can reopen.
David Parry has run the business for the last 48 years. He said the pandemic has been "terrible" for customers and "hard" for the industry too.
He added: "By the time we get going again which is going to be May or June we as a company will have lost £1.5 million.
"Last year we stopped in March, we only ran in January and February which is our low season.
"We sold 10 per cent in August, September and October last year. We closed from November until May, we've hardly had any business in 18 months.
"We've been able to put most of the drivers on furlough and we had business rate relief but we had to keep staff in the office to keep cancelling and refunding tours. We're still doing that now.
"We employ about 35 staff and have about 20 vehicles. We managed to keep most of our staff, we made about half a dozen redundancies.
"Some of our customers have had tours cancelled up to three times. It's terrible for them and hard for us.
"The value of our company has dropped, it's been sliced in half as the value of our vehicles has dropped as people don't want them.
"It's been very difficult for the travel industry, it's been hit very hard. All our brochures from last year went to waste. All the stock we put on the coaches went out of date so that was lost."
Mr Parry said businesses need to "hang on" until later in the year when they can operate again.
"We do lots of events for a variety of clients. Most of the older customer will have been vaccinated before we travel again," he added.
"Hopefully the vaccine passport might be a way we can travel through France.
"We're looking forward to the appetite for going back on holiday again later in the year. It's just the operators who can hang on that long as a lot of customers have gone.We're happy to start as soon as we're legally able to do so.
"Customers were very moved by the roadmap as they could see light at the end of the tunnel but in the mean time the Government is saying don't book a holiday which doesn't help.
"We're going for May 17 which is the date that hotels can reopen as we can't do our tours without hotels and then we'll have to wait for access into Europe.
"We normally would've launched the brochure last October but it would have been out of date so we held it back so nothing starts before May.
"We speak to people every day within the industry, we feel confident that the UK will pick up fast then towards the end of the year maybe we will be able to go into Europe and do Christmas markets.
"People need something to look forward to. We're ready to come back and eager to get back working."
