It’s almost the end of an era for West Yorkshire-based Welsh’s Coaches, but as Judy and John Welsh look forward to retirement this summer, what has prompted their decision to close the business?
Winning the football pools is one of the lesser known reasons for setting up a coach company. But for John Welsh, one Saturday in September 1964 will always be remembered as the day the numbers came up.
“My parents, Bob and Marie, did the pools every week,” he says. “But much like everyone else who sat in front of the television, checking their draws and score draws, they never expected they would win. But win they did, receiving a cheque for a few shillings under £11,300, a figure worth roughly £280,000 today.
“At the time, my father worked for Pemberton’s Coaches of Upton, mainly as Yard Foreman but also doing the occasional bit of driving. Initially, the pools money went into buying a new bungalow with Bob choosing to work for the National Coal Board on the lorries. But in the back of his mind was a plan, and in 1967 he set up Welsh’s Taxi and Private Hire Service, running taxis at the weekends. The business prospered and a year later he bought a Ford Transit minibus. That was the start of the business we have today.”
A difficult decision for Welsh’s Coaches
But now, 57 years later, John and his wife Judy have decided to retire.
“The enjoyment, the fun, it’s disappeared,” explains Judy. “It’s not been an easy decision and there are days when we both look at each other and question whether we’re doing the right thing. Then we think about what’s happening in the industry, an industry that we’ve loved so much. We’ll officially close the doors on 30 June. We have no doubt there’ll be quite a bit of sadness, but there’ll also be quite a lot of relief.”
Sitting with Judy and John in their offices in the village of Upton near Pontefract in West Yorkshire, the emotion is palpable.
“John wanted to close in April 2020 when COVID-19 hit,” explains Judy. “But I said no. I felt we needed to recover and get everything back on calmer waters. I felt we had to stick around a bit longer, not least for our many customers who, over the years, have become part of the Welsh’s family.”
But the writing was on the wall.
New challenges
“During the pandemic we both realised how much we liked having spare time,” Judy continues. “We weren’t always watching the clock! Then we came back to work, and found ourselves in the midst of a flurry of industry challenges. There was Eurotunnel deciding it didn’t want coaches any more, unless you paid a high price. We had hotels booting us out because of lucrative government contracts. Many hotels were struggling with their own staffing issues. Sometimes they wouldn’t tell us and we’d arrive to find the quality we were expecting wasn’t being delivered. If they’d come to us and said they needed to raise their rates to keep the quality, we would have understood. But they didn’t. All of that reflects back on us. We’re very proud of the Welsh’s standard, and our customers weren’t getting it. Over the last 12 months we’ve had more complaints from our customers about hotel quality than in all the years we’ve been operating. We spend so much time checking and rechecking, but it’s draining.”
John echoes the sentiments.
“It’s been a build up over these last few years,” he says. “Everything seems to be an issue now. I appreciate you shouldn’t look back, but it’s hard not to see what I might describe as the old days as a time when being a coach operator was more fun, more enjoyable.”
Steady recovery
Like most coach tour operators, Welsh’s had a very good 2019.
“That year we operated around 140 tours,” says Judy. “In 2020 that dropped to just 22. We closed in the March, ran tours in the August, September and October, then closed again and didn’t reopen until May 2021.”
Bit by bit the business started to recover. In 2023 there were 102 tours in the programme.
“We’d still not fully recovered,” says Judy. “There was still a reticence to travel. Many people had got out of the habit of going away. They’d also got older, and family circumstances had changed. On the plus side we also had people going away once a month, wanting to catch up. Overall it was a successful year, even with increased costs meaning we had to increase our own prices, often quite considerably. We also now have some of the larger coach tour operators picking up in our area as they pass through.
“But at the start of 2023 we decided that we would run the winter/spring 2023/2024 programme and that would be it. We prepared the brochure and we told the hotels we were dealing with of our plans. We didn’t want to take allocation for the summer knowing we would be handing it back. We felt that would be unfair. So, our final tour will be one of our most popular tours, a four-night break to Llandudno staying at the Tynedale Hotel. Out on 31 May and home on 4 June. We have some long-standing private hires in June and then that will be it.”
Camaraderie has gone
But there’s another issue that illustrates how the coach operator landscape has changed over recent years.
“With the news that we’re closing we’ve had our customers asking who they can go with in the future,” says John. “Judy and I are regularly being asked who we can recommend. In the past we would have been able to offer a few names. Now, there’s really no-one in our area who we feel offers the same quality. In the past, perhaps back to those old days again, all the operators in the area would chat and meet up. Most of that has gone. It feels like everyone is just out for themselves. The camaraderie isn’t there. We’ve also had some long standing clients saying, well, can’t you just do one more tour for us? We’ve had to be hard with this.”
The Welsh’s fleet, always immaculately turned out, stands at three: two Mercedes-Benz Tourismos (2017 and 2018) and a 2018 VDL Futura 2. There are four minibuses for use on the company’s door to door shuttle service.
“The fleet grew to seven at one point,” says John. “Between 2000 and 2020 we were well known as a Setra operator. That all came about following a disappointing experience with the erstwhile Bova Magiq. In 2000 we were the first UK operator to have one. Indeed, a second was due and a third was in build. Sadly, on a tour to Lake Garda, passengers sitting at the rear of the coach complained about the heat coming through from the engine. That resulted in me looking around to see what else I could have. An ongoing, positive relationship with EvoBus UK in Coventry brought us a Setra 315 demonstrator. We took it on a tour to Tuscany. Our passengers and driver loved it. So much so that we bought two and ordered a third. Within 18 months the whole fleet was Setra. Looking back, the Setra was the best coach we ever had. But after the blip with the Magiq our relationship with Moseley’s continued and we’ve operated VDL Futura 2s alongside Tourismos. We received excellent support, particularly from Stuart Binns who now leads VDL bus and Coach UK’s service side.”
Thank you
So with around four months to go, how are Judy and John feeling?
“I feel sad that we’re going to have to say goodbye to our wonderful office team,” says Judy. “Anne, who has been with us 30 years, Dawn, for 20, Karen, for nine, Carol, for seven, and our second Karen, who only joined last August, have been fantastic. But they understand.
The world is changing, as is this industry of ours. John and I have had great fun and met some really wonderful people along the way. We’d both like to thank everyone who has supported us over many years. But we’ve made the right decision. It’s time to go.”
