MTB bus tours

griffo1984

I'm thinking of starting an MTB tour business which will ferry passengers across the country to a variety of trail centres in large coach(es). I understand people get on just fine with their own transport with bike racks, so I wanted to gather opinion on if there is a genuine market for riders to jump on a coach with a load of their mates and not worry about driving. From my investigations there doesn't appear to be a dedicated MTB service ferrying passengers around the UK.

I'd love to know if anyone would pay for this service? Some ideas are:-

- multi-day trips (Overnight accommodation included)
- discounted riding at centres
- BBQ to recharge your batteries
- CYTECH engineer on site

So... any thoughts from fellow riders?

thistle_

I'm not sure UK residents would be that interested, but maybe visitors from abroad who want an easy week of biking? People offer that sort of service in warm, sunny places like Spain and the Balearics but I've not seen anyone doing it in the UK.
When I was riding abroad, a couple of the people there said they've heard we have good trails here but they've never visited.

rockmonkeysc

Not in the UK. I like to be able to change plans at the last minute depending on weather. If it's raining where I planned to ride I'll head in a different direction
A coach service won't give that flexibility.
Also, I don't want to sit on a bus with 40+ sweaty riders at the end of the day.

ade555

Hi Griffo1984

I would suggest if you planing anything like that start smaller, depends if you have licence to drive mini buses? if yes get one, attached trailer to store bike, if you unable to drive your self, go and knock on people doors that have company with equipment, speak to them about prices how much they would charge, positive side from that if your venture takes of they will be able to provide higher capacity vehicles like buses, problem you will face how much revenue this will generate, you need to do lot more studies, how many trail centers there is in UK, nearby accommodation to offer for multi day trips, how much all this is going to cost you before you can even advertise this to public at affordable prize, to attract overseas clients you need to be able to advertise this and think how you going to do this so people will trust to pay money up front.

This could be marketed to group of people for the likes of events type, someone somewhere could be keen mountain biker and trying to organize at work place to go out with group of guys/girls for day out but don't know how to sort things out, that where you will come, speak to trail centers about bike hire possibility, if you can speak multi language would be beneficial is well, register on other countries forums and offer with your help to get to local trail centers and accommodation, this way you might build your own client base and reputation.

All this may sound stupid to someone who does it on daily basis for him self but in today day and age everything is possible.

Like Rockmonkey said about, on way back from trip about 40+ on one bus, and think where would they store bikes, buses are big but you would straggle to fit that amount of people, bikes and equipment.

In nut shell you need to start small to see if there is market for this and have very good business plan, at the end of the day you want to make living from it so treat it as business and not play time with mates.

Hope this helps a bit