In the age of data driven technology, the coach industry has had a hard time finding its feet with its traditional toolkits and ways of working, and more importantly, may have struggled to identify potential opportunities for coaches.
Zeelo is one of the first businesses of its kind to offer a solution for the needs of today’s society, and today’s operators. The company was born from two entrepreneurs, Sam Ryan and Barney Williams, who, after visiting a rugby game at Twickenham, realised that coaches were not being utilised in the right way.
Sustainable transportation
Sustainability for operators is now at the forefront of many minds in the industry, but without great investment in-house, operators are starting to see some businesses fall with no new means of finding customers.
Cale Pissara, Head of Marketing at Zeelo says: “Coach operators (generally speaking) still operate on pen and paper.
“They might have traditional sales, but they may not have a modern sales team which use all the up-to-date technology. They don’t have apps, booking platforms, or a 24hr customer service team. These are all things that we have that we put on top of their business and make it far better.”
Using data and technology, Zeelo has identified the gaps in the market which can be filled by coach operators.
After inspiration hit at Twickenham, the company started by looking at a range of events and decided to run several routes in partnership with operators. Cale says that the operators do the transportation and Zeelo provides everything on top.
“We’ve got the data analytics to find where these routes are, where these pockets of people are, and do the marketing, the customer service and the sales. We partner with the coach operator to run the service.
“In essence, the operators are an extension of us and us an extension of them. We help each other to grow each other’s business.”
Latest venture
But events were just the beginning. There was another gap in the coaching market, a bigger one, which Zeelo wanted to tap into – commuting.
“We saw that commuting was the real problem and tackling things like the car parking and congestion, sustainability goals, recruitment and retention for businesses became a cornerstone quickly.”
Partnering with Swift Valley Coaches in Rugby, the business pairing embarked on a new commuter scheme for Prologis – a leading property developer – to which over 100 employees have already signed up.
Employees of Prologis are benefitting from their own premium coach service which picks up from six locations between Leicester and Rugby and takes them directly to their workplace. The employees use an app to book their place on the coach and are kept informed of its whereabouts via a tracking link sent to them by text message.
On average 40-50 workers are using the bus service, which has saved over 50,000 miles (the equivalent to two trips around the world) and approximately 10 tonnes of CO2 emissions. It has taken 30-45 cars off the road and out of the company car park.
On the new partnership, Cale says: “Prologis said it has huge pressures from local councils with regards to sustainability. Employees are stuck in the middle of nowhere and have to drive to get to work. Now can we offer them something where they can leave the car at home and help address the sustainability problem.”
Prologis has a company-wide push to try to reduce its carbon emissions, and this trial has got the business wanting to expand the service into other sites around the country.
Steven Haddock, Director at Prologis UK says: “Offering a viable commuting option for employees is vital to attracting occupiers to large out-of-town sites and Zeelo provides this alongside a superior service. The scheme has been a tremendous success and we can’t wait to roll out the solution to our other sites across the UK.”
Cale adds: “The beauty of it is that this service is successful. We are now looking at how we can expand this instead of just from Leicester to Rugby. Instead of just servicing one of the businesses there, what about all of them and make a much larger story?
“That then falls into an even bigger picture which is ‘how do we grow our services in a region’?”
Other case studies with businesses such as Jaguar Land Rover and Ocado also feature the same benefits, and both coach operators and businesses are becoming more aware of Zeelo and are seeing the benefits for them both.
Looking forward
With solid partnerships with Jaguar Land Rover and Ocado based around the Midlands, Cale wonders how to grow to get a network of operators around the country in the Zeelo family, big or small.
But it’s not just the UK where Zeelo is establishing its routes. With successful and growing ventures in Barcelona, Spain and South Africa he says: “We have good things coming. Operators play a big part of it because they want to grow, and we’re happy to go with them that way. The same goes if we’re going somewhere. We need those operators to come with us.
“I’m being selfish and want Zeelo to grow as much as it can, but we can’t unless operators are on board with us. We can’t exist without them.
“It is a joint relationship at heart, we’re in this together.”
Luke Ryan, Zeelo Head of Growth has made it one of his missions to work hand in hand with operators: “We have always said that we are not here to compete with operators but work with them. We strongly believe there are existing and also historic services that operators have, along with new opportunities in their regions, that if we tackled together, we would be to sustain and grow the number of able coaches on the road.”
