Adrienne,

I was interested in your question as I have had considerable past experience
in putting together packages that attract and retain tour groups and
especially those travelling on buses.

Unless you have a policy the restricts such practice, it is now common to
look at a commissioning arrangement to encourage transport operators to
bring the hordes to your museum.

The second piece of advice I would have is to bundle together a specific
tourist 'product' for this market based upon the limited period of time your
coach load will have with you and married into your Victorian (or another
compatible ) theme.  The bundling might include catering options,
performance, escorted tour, concentration on a limited area of your site
etc.

Hope this assist your strategic planning.  Remember commissions means that
money changes hands but be up front about it and don't get into a bargaining
war!  Don't forget also to make programme allowance for 'toileting time'
when the bus arrives, merchandise operations etc.

You would also be advisable to do a full market survey ( SWOT analysis,
industry trend analysis) to see where your competition is succeeding and if
changed transport patterns are effecting your patronage?

with best wishes
Roger smith
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Adrienne wrote:
<Hi everyone
We've noticed that over the past 5 years, the number of bus tour companies
booking and bringing groups to our site has been steadily dropping.  We've
been building our site up for these past few years as well, such as adding a
restaurant/banquet centre to allow bus groups to have lunch at our site and
creating new partnerships, etc.  We have a great product that is well-known
and we are a National site.

What we would like to know is how other living history sites are doing with
their bus groups and/or what sort of new ideas have you put into place to
increase bus groups.  We already do a living history Christmas programme
with two other museums and our restaurant; our restaurant has developed a
niche for itself in that it works with a Victorian theme, which coincides
with our museum; and we have a partnership with a very large and famous
landscape museum (the Royal Botanical Gardens).  We are members of various
travel trade organizations, such as SOTO.  We activley canvas wholesalers
through faxes, telephone, letter and the Internet.  We feel like we're doing
the right thing, but we've not seen the results.

Any information and comments about how you feel travel trade has been over
the past few years at your site, etc., would be great to hear about and it
might help us refine some of our tactics.>

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