Metro Magazine, September/October 2015

What new initiatives has your operation undertaken that are proving to be successful About five years ago we split our sales and operations department which allowed us to become more efficient in both areas Being a multi location company in Florida brings challenges in identifying where to have equipment and when Since our locations share equipment from time to time depending on sales opportunities we further broke down our operations department and regionalized dispatching and driver relations This was done to improve efficiencies when covering a state as geographically large as Florida as well as the relationships and morale between dispatchers and drivers Today we are seeing the benefits of those changes as empty miles have been reduced substantially allowing us to push that savings straight to our bottomline Along with these procedural changes our customers are enjoying one of the most amenity rich fleets in the country with every coach having 110 volt outlets Wi Fi and one of the coolest features live mapping provided directly to the customer for their trip when they charter an Annett coach Also many coaches offer satellite television and leather seating From a national perspective what are some of the biggest issues the industry is up against Nationally our problem is new entrants We feel the new entrant barrier is mainly due to the hostile environment in which a motorcoach company operates today While fewer new entrants is a good thing in the short term for companies like ours the long term outlook is not so good Fewer operators in the marketplace means less competition on the supplier side Bus costs will go up insurance costs will go up every cost associated with a shrinking industry will increase and we are afraid it could increase to a point where we cannot be competitive with the family car Discuss how you or the industry in general can help grow the Baby Boomer and Millennial markets The population numbers in those generations suggest there is opportunity there however thus far they have not proven to be coach riders Baby boomers are very independent Millennials are a real opportunity but they are also a group who demands convenience and bus travel today is far from convenient While the Northeast has seen some good ridership of regular route bus runs the rest of the country remains fairly stagnant Annett Bus Lines talks to these groups through social media Both are plugged into social media so we try to make traveling by bus as attractive as possible while posting to Facebook Instagram Pintrest and Twitter We post weekly and regularly when we have large events or exciting news Baby Boomers just by their numbers should be a great market for tourism I dont know to what extent they will be acceptable of over the road type bus tours I do think they will accept local touring by bus when visiting the countries tourism hot spots If a company happens to be local to one of those hotspots they could see a bump in utilization but overall baby boomers will remain independent and are savvy travelers that use the internet well As for millennials well we will just have to wait and see where they end up 64 mETRO mAGAZINE SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2015 metro magazine com MOTORCOACH REGIONAL ROUNDTABLE What new initiatives has your operation undertaken that are proving to be successful One of the most recent things weve done here in the Midwest is launched Arrow Stage Lines Executive Edition There is a decent amount of Fortune 500 companies here in Omaha so we added some Mercedes Benz Sprinter Vans all blacked out with leather seats which are a really nice option for businesspeople that may need transportation to and from the office once they are in town We just launched in the middle of August and we are already starting to see really good feedback from that We also launched Arrow Connect which is a Wi Fi option with a unique landing page that allows customers easy one touch access to a variety of different media including social media news stocks shopping entertainment news stocks games sporting news and more We would like to eventually grow Arrow Connect so that passengers can pull out their smartphones tablets or computers and connect to a media server where they would have instant entertainment individualized to them including movies music and live TV We see that as the future of Arrow Connect What we are offering now has been very well received but Im really excited about what the future holds What is your operations biggest issue One challenge we really faced earlier in the year was a driver shortage We have certain standards when we hire drivers and for whatever it is worth we Luke Busskohl Chief Operating Officer Arrow Stage Lines Omaha Neb Brian Annett President Annett Bus Lines Several Fla locationsCONTINUES FROM PAGE 62