News Analysis

WINNING FORMULA: Crawfords took 16 cars to the British Grand Prix, at Silverstone, in July

The chauffeur industry has had a boost from recent sporting events, but the real travel comeback won’t happen until the autumn

The return of crowds to major sporting events gave the ground transport industry a welcome boost. A shot in the arm, you could say, as the success of the Covid-19 vaccination programme meant the Government felt comfortable enough to risk releasing Britain from lockdown on July 19.

At the time of writing, infections were rising to a level not far off last December. But crucially, Covid-related deaths are not rising at the same rate. We may catch Covid, but those without underlying medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus are now unlikely to die. And that’s what we’ll have to live with going forward.

The return of events such as the Open Golf Championship, British Grand Prix and Wimbledon provided work for Britain’s beleaguered executive chauffeuring sector. These events have traditionally provided demand spikes during quiet summer months. While the corporate hospitality market hasn’t quite bounced back – international travel is still strictly limited, so there are far fewer overseas visitors – the sheer fact that there was any work at all was most welcome.

Jobs that might otherwise have been considered humdrum were the subject of proud LinkedIn posts. Robert McKenna, general Manager at Little’s, gleefully recounted the company’s eight-day on-site stint at The Open, held this year in Kent, providing and managing transport for one of the main sponsors.

“It was amazing to get the event buzz back again. Coach shuttles from London and Ashford each day, off-site evening events, dedicated cars for VIPs along with arrival and departure transfers. Everything was seamless and the Kent sunshine made it all even more enjoyable,” he said.

TBR Global Chauffeuring also scored through the hosting of some UEFA

European Championship matches at Hampden Park in Glasgow, as well as at Wembley, where TBR managed the ground transportation requirements of a major tournament sponsor.

TBR used a fleet of five MPVs and three coaches across a three-day on-site operation in London, managing arrivals and departures as well as transport to the championship final.

Meanwhile, Crawfords mustered a fleet of 16 Mercedes-Benz V-Class MPVs to handle work for clients at the British rand Prix at Silverstone. And finding numbers of cars right now is not easy. Many fleets are currently much smaller than they were in pre-pandemic days.

Mike Bell Driven Worldwide

Mike Bell of Driven Worldwide, which reported a 90% drop in business at the height of the pandemic, says he is yet to see a sustained return of business, and doesn’t expect to see a sustained recovery until September.

“We’re still doing a few things, but summer is not a great time for B2B businesses such as ours, The true indication will be September, October and November. Those are the crunch months for us,” he said.

“The banks are going back to their offices from September. Goldman Sachs says nobody will be working from home, which is positive for the banking community.We’re quoting for conference work in December. But business travel still requires main board approval for many companies,” he said.

One main issue is waiting for the reopening of major travel corridors, especially to the US. “There are no clear indicators as to when that might happen,” Bell said. The situation is complicated by the fact that many Americans – mainly Trump voters in the south – are reluctant to get vaccinated.

Bell believes the return will be slow. “If we’re at 20-30% of pre-pandemic levels by September, we’ll be on the right track,” he said.

Jonny Goldstone Green Tomato Cars

Jonny Goldstone, head of Green Tomato Cars, is more optimistic – perhaps because as an operator of a regular private hire fleet, the business is less dependent on big corporates such as banks.

“Because of the school term overlap it’s really hard to gauge if there’s any uplift or not,” he said. “It’s not gone as quiet as soon as I’d expected. There’s more work generally relative to the time of year. But there are too many variables to say yes, things have changed because of ‘Freedom Day’.”

Goldstone said Green Tomato Cars was picking up work from unusual directions, such as film productions, which were providing “tens of jobs per day” moving crews to and from locations.

He agreed with Bell’s assessment that September will be the time to judge whether or not there was a sustained comeback. “We’d expect mid-September to see a notable uptick,” he said. “Then we’ll know if business is coming back, or if it’s still where it shouldn’t be.”

Certainly there seems to be a desire in the corporate world to return to office life. A recent survey by Addison Lee suggested that almost three-quarters of London businesses are planning a return to the traditional workplace by September.

Of the 142 firms asked by the taxi firm, 74% said they would be making a return to their offices over the coming months. Many firms – 71% of those surveyed - believe bringing people back to the office would drive better collaboration.

But many employees do not share their enthusiasm, expressing concern about using public transport. Indeed, 53% of workers said they would be more comfortable going back to the workplace if they did not have to do so.

Several corporate giants have taken this on board, saying they will offer a hybrid model of post-lockdown work. Accountancy giant EY is one of those saying staff would only be required in offices three days a week.

Addison Lee chief executive Liam Griffin said: “Many businesses are keen to get back into the workplace, to give employees the opportunity to see one another and enjoy working together again. But our research shows that safety remains employers’ number one concern when planning the return to the office.”

David Bruce, managing director of Chabe UK, also feels September will be the watershed month. “I think the second week of September – don’t know why, but the world is due to come back. But capacity has to come ahead of demand and we have to be ready.” He said any return was dependent on the US travel corridor coming back. “Heathrow airport is still so quiet,” he said.

Indeed, the biggest obstacle to bringing business back remains the lack of air travel. Heathrow Airport said it expected to see a further fall in passenger numbers in 2021. The airport, which was Europe’s busiest before the pandemic, handled just 4 million passengers in the first six months of the year - a total it would have taken just 18 days to reach in 2019.

The airport forecasts that 21.5m passengers will travel through the airport in 2021, down from 22.1m in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, and down from a peak of almost 90m in 2019. The airport said its cumulative losses from Covid-19 now stood at £2.9bn.

Trade group Airlines UK blames the government’s “traffic light” system for a slower comeback for air travel to and from the UK compared with other European destinations. Airlines UK said passenger bookings in the rest of Europe had recovered to 50% of pre-crisis levels in June, compared to just 16% in the UK.

The trade group said in a statement that decisions to include and exclude destinations such as Portugal and France from the green list represent examples of the “frustrating, last-minute and opaque decision-making that has been a mainstay of the traffic light system so far”.

The group said the government had refused to make more proportionate travel restrictions from low-risk countries “even as nightclubs open in England without any restrictions”.

Airlines are critical too. Ryanair chief financial officer Neil Sorahan said the EU’s digital Covid certificate, which allows a person’s vaccination status to be recognised across the whole bloc, had boosted bookings.

“I think the European policy has worked an awful lot better than in the UK,” he told the BBC’s Today programme. “It’s given more certainty, it’s led to more steady green lists all across Europe. The UK has been a little bit more haphazard with what’s on the green list, what’s on the amber list.”