Each year millions of us around the nation decide to travel up and down the country with the desire to visit friends and family, commute to work or flee to a well-deserved holiday destination. Easy functioning, cost-effective and informative travel is a necessity for all of us to go about our daily lives with minimal stress and worry. One such company is Stagecoach, who are here to provide us with an efficient and frequent coach service with their ever-growing, successful Falcon service. Expect outstanding, friendly customer service every step of the way along with unexpected luxuries including charging sockets and free Wi-Fi; which has come to earn them the title of one of the largest bus operators in the UK!
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n 1980, brother and sister Brian Souter and Ann Gloag decided to start a small recreational vehicle and minibus hire business called Gloagtrotter in Perth, Scotland. With only £25,000 of family inheritance, they decided to put the small nest egg to good use and brought 2 large buses. The pair soon became recognised as a reliable and courteous use of transport to muchneeded destinations around Scotland, that together with their thriving polite and friendly attitude, the company quickly grew. Now, this vast expanding commercial company renamed as Stagecoach has taken the UK by storm becoming the UK’s biggest bus service provider, with over 25,000 employees! OM met with Leading Driver, James Palmer who has been with the company for 3 years, Senior Controller, William BushallCrane who began his Stagecoach career in London and has now worked his way up through the company over his 11 years of service and Marketing Manager, Aisha O’Connor who joined the company in June 2019. The team tell us how they’re focusing on customer retention, why you should choose Stagecoach and how their
Falcon service has grown rapidly over its four years of operation. Stagecoach South West has been running for 25 years, providing the South West with a fleet of almost 500 buses, 65 of them being in Plymouth along with 10 Falcon coaches running between Plymouth and Bristol every hour from 4.15 am to 19.00 pm! The business has developed over it’s 25 years, now hosting 1200 employees including over 1000 drivers!
The Falcon was first launched in 2016 by Stagecoach, and during this 4 year period it’s been running they’ve seen a whopping 1 million passengers use this service, with continuous growing numbers! The Falcon is estimated to take only 3 hours from Plymouth to Bristol and has been a necessity for the towns and villages along the route with no real transport connecting them to Bristol. Other than trains, there was no service running directly between Plymouth and Bristol throughout the day and night, Stagecoach South West saw a gap in the market and the Falcon was born.
Meet some of the team!
In conjunction with this, the Falcon has supplied the population of Plymouth, Bristol and all the other stops along the way including Exeter, Taunton, and Sidcot the availability to travel freely at their convenience through the day and night. What makes the falcon so appealing is the fantastic frequency of coach services’ travelling every hour beginning at 4:15 am till 19:00 pm, then every 2 hours after that. One of the main attractions about the falcon is its flexibility, a ‘hop on hop off’ system has been introduced, just as you would with a normal city bus; allowing those last-minute plans to go-ahead!
With their invincible competitive prices, the Falcon caters to everyone allowing discounts for under 25’s, over 60’s and even providing group deals with it costing only £58 return for 5 people! The Falcon not only offers regularly occurring coaches and unbeatable prices, but outstanding customer service. Each
12 April 2020
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