Great meeting with our friends at the IW Steam Railway yesterday morning. They are hosting Bustival again, which was the public event we put on last year to celebrate our 80th anniversary. It was a great success so will be back again on 18 April 2010. It’s a free day out for all the family, at the steam railway’s Havenstreet Station, the hub of their operations. The railway itself is a fantastic day out, and we’ll be bringing a range of vehicles old and new, side stalls , and displays from a few of the partners we work with. Hope to see you there! there’s a free shuttle service using open tops from Newport Bus Station too!

Spent the day at the Wight2Bheard conference today - a conference where young people get to air their views and raise issues. Really good day - lots of voiceforous customers with complaints about customer service, service levels and prices.

Nice to be able to explain what determines our fares, given that much is down to the underfunding of the government’s free travel scheme for pensioners - similar story with service levels. On customer service much of what the young people want is exactly what we want ourselves. It was really good to quickly get to a point where we were talking about solutions rather than just problems.

We’ll be working with the IW Youth Council in the near future hopefully, helping us to understand our relationship with young people, how we communicate with them and how we treat them.

Went to a launch yesterday at the most fabulous holiday home. If you’re thinking of staying on the Island, or know someone who is, then this place is stunning, situated in a beautiful part of the Island near to the coast, within walking distance of a good pub, and most importantly it’s right on our route 6 with its spectacular views.

http://www.vintagevacations.co.uk/mission.htm

The mighty US coach brand came to the UK in 2009 when First Group (one of the other big 5 bus groups in the UK) who own Greyhound in the US, launched in the UK between Portsmouth and Southampton, and London.

It’s great watching Greyhound try out all sorts of new ideas and thinking laterally about the product. They recognise the Island as a big potential market for travel up to the smoke. We met up with Alex Warner, Greyhound’s UK boss before I headed for the snow a couple of weeks ago, discussing how we could work together. Ventnor to Victoria is the idea - buy a through ticket from anywhere on the Island to London. We’re getting back together again next week to tie up some details - good news for Islanders and ‘integrated transport’…and his coaches look stunning!

It’s a fair while since i’ve blogged now, but times have been busy. Squeezed in a quick holiday at home with the family for half term before helping out our sister company Marchwood Motorways. They manage a large contract for Go South Coast (our regional business that incledes Southern Vectis) for group coach travel, and this time of year is busy with ski-ing holiday work. Each coach requires two drivers, so drivers are in high demand. A number of staff volunteer from across the region to head off to the snow, and Mr SV is one - enjoying a bit of ski-ing. Plenty of snow in the French Alps, great for ski-ing but not for driving coaches!

Anyway, we’re back now, but to about 400 emails, and the mother of all tenders to complete for IW Council this week. This contract is IW Council’s huge new contract for transporting school children from September and requires all manner of information to be provided. It’s good in that it raises the standard of competition for contracts, but the completition of the tender documentation takes many many hours of staff time.

We’re busy now with Bestival and Festival planning, and as well as being the official bus operator on the Island for both events, we are also managing direct coach travel to both events from a range of towns and cities across England and Wales.

For Festival we are already arranging buses to hire in from mainland operators to make up the number of extra drivers and vehicles we need.

We are also responsible for all coach transport for the 2011 Island Games which are being held on the Island, and are already beginning to book coach operators for this event too.

Having caught up with blogging,  i’ll blog in more detail about these subjects shortly!