Following the lockdown in UK, coach tourism operators said that 40,000 jobs will be at risk unless their business is reclassified as part of the leisure industry. The body representing 300 coach tourist enterprises said that as they are not deemed to be part of the leisure sector, their firms are not entitled to benefits such as rates relief.
The Coach Tourism Association (CTA) said its members, which run tours throughout Britain and Northern Ireland, generate an estimated £6bn a year for the national economy. The warning comes as more than 2,000 jobs were lost after the collapse at the weekend of one of the largest coach tour operators in the UK, Shearings.
Shearings, which is owned by the Specialist Leisure Group, announced the closure of the business on its website: “All tours, cruises, holidays and hotel breaks booked with the Specialist Leisure Group have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.” Other coach operators said that they have lost hundreds of bookings since the lockdown. One tour guide has switched to driving delivery vans during the pandemic.
John Wales, the chairman of the Coach Tourism Association, said his organisation wanted tour coaches to be treated the same as other leisure industries that have received state fiscal support like restaurants, hotels and pubs. “The key action we are looking for from government is to recognise coach tour operators as leisure businesses. We are aware that many of our coach operator members are being denied support that is being made available to other tourism businesses in terms of rates relief, which is crazy; our members whole business is about tourism and leisure.”
Wales said coach tourism felt forgotten and unrecognised. He added that coach tours could play a vital role in any “staycation” surge in holidays in Britain after the lockdown. “Coach operators are understandably aggrieved when they see billionaire airline owners go cap in hand for support from the government, when the largely family-owned coach tour sector delivering holidays for millions of customers is unrecognised and unsupported.”
