Essential businesses and universities continue to keep commuting alive across cities in North America. A Vanderbilt University research published in April 2023 illustrates the changes in commuting patterns in recent years. Unsurprisingly, faculty and students continue to travel to universities at least 3 to 4 days per week, with staff generally facing longer commutes. For essential businesses, the number of commuting days is generally much higher. And let’s be honest, no one likes commuting. A Gallup survey estimates that commutes of just 30 minutes can lead to higher stress and anger issues. Organizing car-pools and community transit has been proposed as a possible solution to ease commuting, and it’s certainly a better alternative to single-passenger cars. However, organizing group transportation can often be an uphill task with conflicting schedules, communication challenges with charter bus hire contractors, and the accounting mire it creates.
Centralizing charter bus hiring can be the best solution for universities and essential businesses trying to reduce the costs and hassles of commuting.
Read on for a deep dive into Centralized Charter Bus Hire Process:
- Easier Management and Coordination with Centralized Charter Bus Booking
- Cost reduction using greater charter bus hire volume
- Implementing charter bus hire centralization processes
Easier Management and Coordination with Centralized Charter Bus Rental
If you’ve ever tried to organize a company getaway or coordinated a travel itinerary, you will be deeply familiar with the anxiety and effort needed to execute it flawlessly. It only gets more complex when you scale up the numbers for multiple types of trips. For instance, the Vanderbilt University survey explains how postdoctoral students may need to commute shorter distances more frequently. On the other hand, staff members may need to travel long distances for fewer days.
Centralizing charter bus booking saves time on availability checks and vendor searches across each department or team. It also provides greater leverage to negotiate favorable terms by consolidating business for service providers. Moreover, it offers improved transparency and traceability for group travel.
Additionally, universities may have representatives attending various conferences or offsite visits, widening the range of trip types coordinators need to find transportation for. Many organizations also deal with the unpredictable nature of group travel as they cope with changing standards for hybrid, essential, and remote work. Bringing all these varied trip types to a single platform can reduce complexity and time taken to arrange transportation. It can also ensure greater compliance with timelines and offer unmatched transparency, simplifying group travel coordination. Lastly, it’s easier to hold suppliers accountable and demand greater flexibility and service by consolidating all trip types.
Cost Reduction Using Greater Volume for Charters
When comparing the costs of charter bus hire solutions to car rentals or private taxis, it comes down to the volume and macro trends such as fuel costs. For example, rising fuel costs forced a 23% increase in rates for the iconic yellow NYC cabs in 2022. Car rental prices have also increased by 50% over pre-pandemic rates in recent years. On the other hand, a coach bus charter can range between $600 to $1200, making the per head cost very reasonable for multiple trips taken in the same day for a sizeable group.
Another crucial factor to consider is the reduction in rates possible by consolidating all bus requirements with a single supplier. Finance and administration teams across universities and private organizations can definitely unlock savings and negotiate better rates by working with fewer regular vendors for their charter bus hiring needs.
Charter Bus Hiring Centralization Tools and Processes
- Publish SOPs in internal portals or intranet.
- Route all bookings through a single internal stakeholder.
- Create a custom booking platform by collaborating with your service provider
The first step towards centralizing the charter bus hiring process is defining the SOPs and publishing them on an internal knowledge base. Whether you’re trying to coordinate group travel for a university or a not-for-profit organization, creating an online and easily accessible database can save a ton of time and hassles for your colleagues. Be sure to make this information available on internal communication channels such as Slack or on the company intranet. It can also be a part of employee onboarding for greater effectiveness.
Partnering with the right provider is as important as defining the SOPs. For example, Bus.com generally assigns a dedicated account manager for universities, enterprises, and other organizations.
Universities and organizations can also benefit from creating a custom web portal or application to centralize all group travel procurement. This way, everyone in your organization can automatically align with a standard process. Even if you don’t have a large budget for custom development, you can still use tools such as JIRA and Confluence to standardize charter bus hire requests.
Last but not least, centralizing the charter bus hire process can be challenging due to the additional effort needed to shape the organizational culture. However, the rewards are almost always worth it in terms of saving time, costs, and the troubles of coordinating group transportation.
