PASSENGER TRAVEL NEWS.
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The Latest Doings and Developments in the Bus and Coach World,
TALKING ABOUT COACHING.
The Publicity Efforts of Some Northern Owners.
AT SOME of the seaside towns there are motor coach owners who endeavour to satisfy the souvenir hunter. When holiday-makers have, for the space of One week or ten days, freedom from business cares, and are able to revel to their hearts' content amongst what one might call picture-postcard scenery, they develop a crate for collecting little souvenirs, which in the'days that follow remind them of a happy holiday spent at
Most holiday-makers 'have this weakness—if such it is, and some coach owners have net been slow to seize upon its publicity value.
Very few holiday-makers, when they travel by coach on a day's tour from a seaside town, even remember the coach company with whom they booked. Their recollections have recorded all the incidents of the trip, the wonderful scenery and the genial company, but. the coach they travelled by—they knew it v as comfortable and fine to ride in, they might remember its colour and perhaps the driver, but who the owners were-well, they. forget. Naturally, coach owners, when they please people, expect them to eome again, but they often overlook the frailty of the human memory. It is perfectly true that at the popular resorts one cannot get away from the familiar tours announcements and the coach booking offices and kiosks; holiday
makers, while they are in the town, cannot help but feel attracted, or at least responsive, to the atmosphere created by the coach owner.
, Some owners in the seaside towns have their booking offices artistically painted and decorated both inside and out and with frontages_ covered with maps, photos., and plaster .contour models of the territory they traverse spare no effort to interest the public. The hospitality of a comfortable waiting (or writing) room is 'offered them,together with the opportunity of consulting scores of guide books and other publications dealing with places within coaching distance of that particular town.
Some coach owners have arrangements for photographing every party that leaves their garage, and, by the time the Coach returns at eventide a Photographic print is ready for each of the passengers. The provision, so promptly, of such an acceptable souvenir is not intended to be a profit-making side line, but is merely a propaganda touch to remind passengers, and to inform their. friends, of a certain pleasurable day in one of So-andso's coaches. At most popular resorts there are itinerant photographers on the look-out for char-itbancs parties ; they are not likely to be useful to the coach owner, who should make arrangements with a local man, able to turn out the print promptly 'and at the same time-at a reasonable price.
Whatever publicity methods are adopted by coach owners, it is always best to trade. under . a name which, can easily be remembered. The clesignatiou of the' proprietor of the coaches is someti mes efficacious, but . at Llandudno colours symbolize the respective fleets. For instance, the Reds, theBlueS, the
Silvers, etc. •
Practically all of the Llandudno companies have propaganda which is peculiarly individualistic. Some issue Hies, trated guide-books and have very fanciful -booking kiosks, and distribute brochures and picture and novelty postcards at the boarding houses and to passengers.
The Blues, for instance, hand to every passenger a souvenir photographic postcard similar to that illustrated on this page, giving a view of the Blues' fleet of Thernyerofts, flanked by views of four of the best-known North Wales beauty spots. . Tbe only printing on the card is the name, address and telephone number of the Blues. Another of their publicity p.c.s is more topical, but the point of it is " Travel by the Royal Blue coaches," The Silvers Issue a p.c. of one of their armchair coaches, ivhich forms a. flap, covering h folded inset of 12 North Wales " sights." All of these ideas are useful methods of propaganda.
More than once has The Commercial Motor urged coach owners to talk " shop " to their It is riot sufficient to tell Tom, Dick and Harry to travel by niotor coach ; tell them why they should: What is wanted nowadays
would be called by the advertising expert " Reason why" publicity. Coach owners during their short season spend tens of thousands of pounds on advertising their tours. The writer has -counted as many as 30 separate announcements in one evening journal, and to assess the cost of the advertising space at £1C0 would be putting it moderately. The Press is probably the best medium for broadcast advertising.; there is no fault to find with the medium, but with the method. If the advertisers referred to had pub their heads together and de cidei upon a co-operative advertising scheme to popularize not only their own tours but motor coaching generally, one ventures to state that they would be doing themselves more lasting goad than by the present slip-shod publicity.
Even a certain daily coach service which is maintained irrespective of the nember of bookings and of weather conditionS must be advertised—if only for the purposes of goodwill. It is the very persistence of the advertising that brings results. Spasmodic advertising has but little value.