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While Other Businesses Reopen, Tour Bus Industry Continues to Suffer
Many businesses may have begun to reopen. However, busses that transport entertainers, tourists, commuters, sports teams, and students are losing millions. Additionally, employees in this bus industry remain unemployed.
Fox Business reported that between 80 and 95 percent of motorcoach trips didn't push through due to the coronavirus pandemic. The loss amounts to $4.8 billion since mid-March.
Hemphill Brothers Coach Company is one of the country’s largest tour bus providers in the country. They provide busses to big names like Beyonce, Cher, and Paul McCartney. Even they had to deal with the cancellations of concerts since mid-March. Brothers and co-owners Joe Hemphill and Trent Hemphill had to “furlough workers and consider pivoting their business to public rides after losing millions in revenue,” Fox Business reported.
“Now that the entertainers are not moving, our business is basically parked,” Joe Hemphill said.
Impact on the Bus Industry
More must be done to save the motorcoach industry.
Coronavirus brings tour bus industry to a halt, costing companies millions https://t.co/AM0G1fzhG0 #busesmoveamerica— Premier Charters (@PremierCharters) June 15, 2020
Hemphill Brothers normally transports 1,000 people per night. Some of their biggest clients pay $1,500 per day per bus. Currently, they furloughed nearly all their 150 drivers. The company is now running on just 5 percent of its normal revenue and has lost $10 million since mid-March.
“For us, the touring, the concert industry, depends on large crowds and so do the artists with their big productions so we don’t know when we’ll be able to start back up,” Trent Hemphill said.
According to Fox Business, many motorcoach enterprises “command 70 percent of their annual income in the spring from March through June, in the middle of the pandemic-related closures.”
“Even though travel and hospitality are starting to open up, this segment of the industry will not open up nearly at the same pace – we’re looking at a three- or four-year recovery,” said Peter Pantuso, president and CEO of the American Bus Association.
“If you can only put 25 people on a 50-passenger bus, you cannot run a bus at the same rate for very long,” he added.
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