RETURN OF DRIVERS WOULD FUEL A MOTORCOACH TRAVEL RESURGENCE

BY BRIAN JEWELL

DETROIT— American Bus Association president and CEO Peter Pantuso opened the organization’s annual Marketplace by swearing off two words: “pandemic” and “COVID.”

“This week, I promise not to use the P word or the C word,” he told delegates at the event’s opening session. “Those words are over in my book. I’m done with them.”

That statement garnered an enthusiastic round of applause from attendees of the conference, which took place February 4–7 in Detroit. That enthusiasm pervaded many of the conversations that took place throughout the conference as well, as tour planners and travel industry representatives alike anticipated a very strong business environment in 2023.

“Last year, people were excited, but there was still a lot of caution,” Pantuso told The Group Travel Leader. “There was a lot of commiseration about the past two years and what everyone went through. But as they got through the year, travel just exploded. Every operator tells me the same thing — it went from 0 to 100 miles per hour overnight.”

As business came roaring back for tour and motorcoach companies, so did the attendance numbers for ABA’s signature event.

“Last year, we had between 1,600 and 1,800 people on the Marketplace floor,” Pantuso said. “I think we’re looking at somewhere between 2,700 and 2,900 this year.”

In addition to an overall industry rebound, part of that attendance growth is attributable to ABA’s partnership with Busworld, a group that organizes motorcoach industry trade shows around the world, to host the inaugural Busworld North America show in conjunction with the ABA Marketplace. Whereas the ABA gathering is traditionally focused on the tour and travel aspect of the motorcoach industry, Busworld added exhibits and education for operations and logistics professionals.

“We already represent all segments of the industry — the travel, tour and motorcoach sides,” Pantuso said. “So we had one coordinated effort to put on two shows. We coordinated the scheduling, decorating, messaging and getting the word out to some of the same people and some different people.”

While Marketplace and Busworld North

America attendees were optimistic about business prospects, they also grappled with challenges facing the industry. This included a shortage of motorcoach drivers, which was already a problem before the pandemic.

“We’re releasing a study we did on the driver shortage issue,” Pantuso said. “It shows that in round numbers there are about 30,000 drivers in the United States, but we’re down about 7,300 from before 2020. That’s about 25% short of the drivers we need. There’s rarely a coach company I talk to that doesn’t say they left business on the table in 2022. I was talking to a small operator the other day who said they left well over $1 million on the table last year because they didn’t have the drivers.”

To keep their fleets moving, Pantuso said, many motorcoach companies have offered drivers pay increases of 20% or more in the past two years.

“The pay issue is starting to resolve itself, and that’s helping,” he said. “And as we go through a recession, maybe, there could be people who stepped out of the job market who might want to start coming back.”