There’s a lot to be said for sticking to what you know and doing it properly. That’s what happens at Blackpool-based Swann Tours, which has found its niche and is quite happy running its own programme
Some coach operators aspire to running a large fleet. Others are happy to stay small, do what they do best and leave the hassle and the headaches to someone else. Blackpool-based Swann Tours, which has just one full-size vehicle, is among the latter.
It was founded in 1986 by father and son Ken and Darren Swann. Darren’s wife Jane came on-board later, but in three decades, fleet size has never exceeded two.
“I was an apprentice engineer with the Ribble bus company after deregulation,” says Darren. “Then there was a round of redundancies and I was let go.”
Ken, meanwhile, started his career as a lorry driver before trying his hand carrying passengers, and he had a good relationship with local operator Jacksons Coaches.
“Darren was about 21 when he was made redundant, and it was his mechanical knowledge that allowed us to set up on our own,” he says. “Labour rates were high even then, and maintenance would have consumed a lot of money.”
With an O-Licence granted and assistance from the proprietor of Jacksons Coaches, Swann Tours purchased its first vehicle: A secondhand Bedford with a Duple body. It took a little while before the wheels were turning, however.
“Things were very quiet at the beginning and we couldn’t work out why,” says Ken. “People would ask for a quote, but then we would hear no more from them.
“So I called a coach company in Blackpool and asked for a price. I am originally from Wigan, and I was basing our rates on what Wigan operators charged. In Blackpool, it was different, which was why we were getting no work. When we realised, we had lots of jobs coming in.”
Up and running
Things started in a way that will be familiar to many operators, and that was with private hire. “Then one day a chap called me. He’d heard that we had a nice coach and he wanted to look at it,” explains Ken.
“His group would hire the Bedford for multi-day trips to various places, but they always booked their own hotels. That got us into tours, and we have never looked back.”
Private, coach-hire-only tours soon grew into a planned programme that was sold on the open market, and just as they do today, the Swanns did all the legwork themselves.
Wholesalers have never been part of their way of doing business, and all hotel bookings are made directly. A brochure is produced, and it is dispatched to a small but loyal mailing list of customers in the Fylde.
How these tasks and others were handled changed dramatically when Jane became part of the business.
“When I met Darren in 2000, he and his father had pieces of paper lying around with people’s details on them,” she says. “They would also hand-write each envelope when brochures were sent out. That had to change.”
Today Darren and Jane run the business. They share the driving; Ken has surrendered his Category D licence, although he still takes a back seat quite literally, traveling on many of the 20 tours that are operated per year.
“We were doing 40 per year at one point but that became too much to handle. We do an occasional private hire, but only four or five per year,” says Darren.
Magic ingredients
In the past, regular continental work was undertaken, but it became less common and this year Swann Tours will not leave the UK. There are a number of reasons for that. The ever-increasing popularity of low-cost airlines and difficulties with the German VAT system are two, but passengers increasingly want to travel shorter distances, says Darren.
That even extends to a reduction in popularity of tours to Scotland, and when combined with pick-ups that are local to the coach’s base, it means that its annual mileage is now around 25,000km.
“We have changed to two longer tours per month, and doing that means that we are usually fully-booked,” says Jane. “We sometimes see other operators and their coaches may be less than half full.”
A recent tour to Llandudno went with 48 passengers aboard, and crunching the numbers shows that at least as much profit is made there as it would be on a two-week trip to Germany or Austria.
The work involved is less and the wear and tear on the cherished Van Hool is minimal, and listening to customers and securing regular repeat business means that many travellers have become good friends with the Swanns.
“We did a tour to Stratford-upon-Avon and the Shakespeare trail recently and for that we booked a blue badge guide. They are money well spent; they know exactly what they are talking about,” says Darren.
“We stopped somewhere and the guide said to me: ‘I can’t believe it. You know every passenger’s name’. I didn’t really know everyone’s name, but I knew most of them.”
Adds Jane: “Some people book up to 14 holidays with us per year and they know that when they come on one of our tours there will be someone else that they know. If we had five or six coaches, that would be different.”
The simple things
Establishing such a relationship with clients is not as difficult as it may sound, Jane continues. Pricing of tours is reasonable; they are not bargain basement and neither are they hugely expensive, but the key regardless of what is charged is guaranteeing good value.
“Some operators trip up on not making people feel welcome. We treat everyone as family and we make sure that when they are with us, all the thinking has been done for them. We talk to our customers, which is a simple thing to do that costs nothing,” says Darren.
It was a focus on customer service that led to the purchase of a small Ford minibus some years ago. Although it arrived new, all it was used for was local pick-ups and drop-offs after the service delivered by some taxi companies was found wanting.
“It wasn’t the taxi drivers; it was the operators who kept getting things wrong,” says Jane. “It’s cheaper to hire taxis than to run our own minibus, but if the reliability is not there, then it reflects badly on us.”
A cherished coach
The DAF was bought new in 2007, and despite a decade’s work it still looks like it rolled off the production line yesterday.
Such is the standard that it’s maintained to, it secured the Coach of the Year award as voted for by drivers at the UK Coach Rally in May, along with recognition as the best coach in its age class.
“The DAF is 10 years old and it isn’t going to last forever. We also look at the coach holiday business and we think that we have 10 years left before we retire, so we plan to replace it with something else that will see us out,” says Darren.
Currently he and Jane are torn between a new addition and a late-model used Euro 5. Thanks to the skills gained at Ribble, Darren handles all maintenance of the Van Hool himself using facilities made available by Jacksons Coaches, but the prospect of doing that with a Euro 6 is not appealing.
“I’m looking at coaches constantly, and we could sell the DAF 10 times over. I have seen the exhausts on a Euro 6 and I’ve no idea where I would start with one of those.
“We’re in the fortunate position that we could buy a new coach on a straight deal, but it would have to give us that money back for our retirement. I can’t say for certain that it would do that, because we see that the coach holiday business is in gradual decline.”
Quite a journey
Whatever the next coach may be, it will be given a loving home. The DAF is spotless, and planning permission for a small garage has been secured on a plot of land owned by the couple.
Did Darren and Ken ever think that the business would achieve what it has done, and all with one front-line vehicle? No, is the answer.
“We always thought that we’d be a general coach hire business, doing the odd day trip along with private hires, hen nights and the like,” says Ken.
“Tours never crossed our minds in the beginning. Then we had the first booking for five days away, in Weston-super-Mare. I realised then that we earned as much for that as for five separate days’ hire at home, while doing less than half the mileage.”
In other words, Swann Tours found its niche, stuck with it and created a prosperous business out of an episode of uncertainty.
