Cosmos bid fails again
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AN APPEAL by Travel House (Luton) Ltd against the refusal of the Metropolitan Traffic Commissioners to allow it to operate UK coach tours on behalf of Cosmos was rejected by the Secretary of State for the Environment in a written decision last week. His inspector found that Travel House had been unable to prove evidence of increas.ng demand for UK tours.
Travel House's appeal was Thjected to by a large -lumber of UK operators, ncluding, Glenton, Galleon, Tillings, Southdown, Wallace Arnold, Frames Tours, Scottish Omnibuses, United Automobile, Northern General, Ribble, Standerwick and Excelsior. In their submissions to the inspector these operators maintained that evidence of unsatisfied demand for domestic coach tours was weak and that the appellants had greatly underestimated their costs. In reply Travel House said that tourism was on the increase and that lack of capacity was not confined to peak periods. It could be safely assumed that whatever prices Cosmos eventually charged, they would be quite as low as those of other operators.
The inspector, in his report to the Minister considered that the main issue was whether there was an unsatisfied demand for coach holidays in Britain. It was not in his view enough to assume that the demand existed and that failure to fill seats on existing tours (there were 34,000 empty seats with London operators alone) was due to inefficiency. The Group welcomed the remission of fuel tax announced on February 11 in respect of stage carriage services but protested that fuel duty remained at the high level of 221/Zp a gallon on all other services at a cost of £0.5m a year.
Further representations are to be made to the Chancellor in an endeavour to have complete fuel duty relief extended to all services since the Group considers the arbitrary distinction in respect of stage services is "anomalous".