SIGHT - SEEING TOURS ON A CONTRACT BASIS.
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A London Operator, Specializing in Day Trips, Allows Booking Agencies to Print their Names on its Handbills.
FOR the past four years G.B. (Motor Tours), Ltd., 72, Great Portland Street, London, W.1, has been operating coaches on half a dozen interesting sight-seeing trips from London, mainly for American 'tourists, and the experience of this company has led to the development of certain arrangements which are unusual
amongst smaller operators engaged in this class of business. Instead of issuing booklets and handbills with its own name, the company virtually acts as a contractor for nearly every tourist agency in London, as well as for some in America and elsewhere, and, whilst remaining responsible for the operation oE the coaches, allows the many agencies to distrihnte literature relating to them which bears their respective names and addresses.
The result is that, out of 4,000 sightseeing passengers carried during the 1928 season between February and November, less than one per cent. were
actually booked at the company's office ; large numbers, in fact, were booked in New York by tourist offices, which included day trips from London in the itineraries of their European tours.
The company is using mainly Marnislay and Dennis vehicles, those used for sight-seeing near London hay jug all-weather heads '• and those used on the Oxford and other longer runs being equipped with Pullman bodies. For tourists wishing to see London, morning, afternoon and evening runs are available. The day trips include one to Windsor Castle, Eton and Hampton Court, another to Oxford, and a third to Canterbury and Rochester. There is also a favourite two-day tour through the Shakespeare country, including Oxford, Sulgrave Manor, Kenilworth Castle, Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon.
The operator's own conductors accompany the tours, which have become so well known in the past year or two that G.B. (Motor Tours), Ltd., actually has accounts with such bodies as H.M. Office of Works, so that its admission vouchers for such places as the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Warwick Castle are accepted, this avoiding trouble in obtaining tickets.
Incidentally, the company is running regular daily services to Brighton, Worthing, Eastbourne, as well as weekend services to Hastings and Margate.