22/03/2004
A million bargain-hunters have rushed to cash in on the £1 fares offered by the UK’s first low-cost internet bus service, megabus.com.
Interest in megabus.com has gone through the roof since it went live nationwide on 1 March and 250,000 passengers have already travelled on the ground-breaking service.
Around 20,000 people a day are logging on to the website, with an average of one seat booked for every four visitors - an incredibly high hit-rate.
Megabus.com, which uses high-capacity double decker buses, has captured the public imagination since a new network of routes, linking London to 10 cities in England and Wales, was launched three weeks ago. It followed similar success on trial routes in Scotland and the north of England.
Brian Souter, Stagecoach Group Chief Executive, said: “Interest in megabus.com has been well beyond our expectations and we are seeing an encouraging growth in passenger numbers only three weeks after we went live across the country.
“Prices for inter-city bus travel have never been so low and customers know megabus.com is the only place they will get real bargain deals all year round rather than one-off promotions with lots of small print.”
Megabus.com is based on the same concept as the low-cost airlines and is appealing to a wide audience, including students, commuters, families and “silver surfers” - the over 55s market who use the internet.
Megabus.com now operates on the following routes across the UK:
- Birmingham-London
- Plymouth-Exeter-London
- Swansea-Cardiff-London
- Bristol-London
- Bournemouth-London
- Southampton-London
- Portsmouth-London
- Brighton-London
- Oxford-London
- Manchester-Leeds
- Manchester-Liverpool
- Perth-Dundee-Edinburgh
- Perth-Dundee-Glasgow
- Edinburgh-Glasgow
- St Andrews-Edinburgh
Seats on the no-frills ticketless service are yield managed in the same way as the budget airlines. Seats start from £1, with slightly higher fares for last-minute bookings or popular journeys. All reservations are subject to a 50p booking fee.
ENDS
For further information, please contact:
Steve Stewart, Head of Media and Public Affairs, Stagecoach Group, tel 01738 442111 or 07764 774680.
