Bus Tours Magazine - Information

Bus Tours Magazine

Industry Information

Are you interested in information on bus and group tours? Following is some interesting background information and facts on bus and group tours as well as why you should want to advertise into this market.

What Has 100 Legs
And Spends Money?

Some facts, figures and interesting information on bus and group tours.

Bus and group tours are the fastest growing segment of the tourism business.
Because of the number of people involved, bus and troup tours create a major positive impact on the local economy. Depending on the type of tour and activities, each day that a bus tour remains in town adds another $5,000 to $10,000 to the local economy.
Due in part to the aging of the Post-War Baby Boomers, the bus and group tour industry is expected to continue expanding at least until 2020.
The average bus tour passenger is getting younger and activities included on bus tours are becoming less passive.
Bus and group tours have proven to be the most resiliant portion of the travel market. Following the 9/11/01 tragedy, it has been the commercial, business and convention segment of the travel industry that is the slowest in coming back.
Modern tour coaches are 45 feet long and carry as many as 57 passengers in comfort. Newer motor coaches used on tours typically have a galley for food service, comfortable reclining seats and reading lights, a rest room, and a DVD sound and video entertainment system to rival the airlines.

Why Advertise to
Bus and Group Tours?

There are many reasons to solicit business from bus and group tours.
Here are several of them.

Bus tours are the most repitive segment of American travelers. Families are unlikely to return to the same attractions year after year. Bus tours, on the other hand, come in force and are likely to return. While the same patrons are unlikely to return, the bus tour planners are very likely to repeat a good tour and bring different people the second, third, fourth and tenth time.
Bus tours operate all year long, not only when school is out. Are you looking for more busines on weekdays or in the winter?
When a bus tour pulls up to your door is may be carrying more than 50 passengers. Hence, one sale to a bus tour can effectively translate into 50 customers.
Current projections indicate that total travel expenditures in the United States will be approximately $575 billion for 2004. In-house estimates are that the readers of Bus Tours Magazine are responsible for an expenditure of as much as $2.5 billion annually.

Taxation or Bus Tours?

Why some government agencies have been putting in more
effort to solict bus tour business

If you work for or with a government agency which funds a significant portion of its budget from local taxation, you should be looking at increasing bus tours in your area. As our world of sales, commerce and employment becomes smaller because of improved communication and travel, local taxation will become less and less practical in the future. Because of the increasing mobility, sales and businesses will simply move to areas with lower taxation.

This is already obvious in sales near state lines where buyers will travel a little extra in distance to pay lower taxes. In many areas, local speciality stores are already losing ground to stores on the World Wide Web. Attempts to tax internet activities have been held back by the fact that those activities could easily move to different and even foreign locations with a corresponding loss of jobs and technology.

The same problem is becoming more evident in manufacturing and assembly. Tax breaks to get a company to move into an area are typical. However, many manufacturing and assembly operations have left traditional industrial areas to move their jobs and commerce to areas with lower taxes. This same situation has been happening for years on a national basis as jobs and employment move to other countries which offer better conditions for the companies involved. We have increasingly become a society of consumers rather than producers because of busineesss moving to areas with lower taxes.

Increasing local taxation is the equivalent of putting weights on the ankles of your home basketball team to handicap them in a tournament. Business is like a tournament. The players will increasingly move to places where people do not put weights on their ankles so they can compete. Numerous other governments are willing to reduce taxes in order to entice jobs and commerce to move in.

One of the best solutions to this problem is increasing bus tours in your area. Bus tours are just the opposite of local taxation . . . they bring people and money in from other areas to create jobs and improve the economy in your area. A single bus tour can improve your local economy by as much as $5,000 to $10,000 each day.

It may be noteworthy that a state like Florida, where tourism represents as much as 10% of the local economy, does not have a state income tax.