First Bus, the UK’s leading bus operator, has revealed a 28% increase year on year in sales of its ‘carnet’ multi-journey products, which typically enable customers to purchase ten journeys at a discounted rate.
More than 216,000 journeys were made using multi-journey tickets across First Bus in January 2016, rising from 168,000 in January 2015. The company has linked the increase in demand of the simple and flexible tickets to its increasing availability as an m-Ticket and changing work patterns after the Office of National Statistics in February confirmed 8.43m people in the UK are working in part time roles, an increase of 134,000 year on year.
Commenting, Commercial Development Director at First Bus, Simon Pearson, said: “For someone who uses the bus two or three days a week, such as a part time worker, our simple 10 journey proposition offers the best value and greatest flexibility. Coupled with the increasing availability of our multi-journey products as m-Tickets, enabling customers to use their mobile phones as bus tickets, explains we believe why we’re seeing a spike in sales across our businesses.”
He added: “The bus is absolutely vital to the UK’s economy, every day almost 2.5million people across the UK travel to work by bus, and a million more use the bus as a vital back up. The growing demand for multi journey tickets is strong evidence that more people are working part-time, or working shifts often out with traditional commuting peak time periods.”
Richard Nicol (40), a bus driver in Aberdeen, has worked for First Bus for 15 years and has noticed a surge in demand for multi-journey tickets locally. He said: “I’ve certainly noticed an increase in sales, particularly in areas of the city where they have recruited lots of part time employees. If they are only travelling once or twice a week, multi-journey tickets can be used at any time, are really flexible and gives them the best value. A lot more passengers are buying them in advance via their mobiles too, and just showing the m-Ticket on their mobile phone screen to the driver. It’s fair to say that the way people use the bus is changing now more than ever.”
Customers can purchase multi-journey tickets via the ‘First Bus mTickets’ app which is available for free on App Store and Google Play.
ENDS
For more information, please contact Niall Dowds, Head of Communications, First Bus, on 07860 936671 or email [email protected]
NOTES TO EDITORS
FirstGroup plc is the leading transport operator in the UK and North America and our services help to create strong, vibrant and sustainable local economies. During the last year around 2.4 billion people relied on us to get to work, to education, to visit family and friends and much more and, each day, every one of our 110,000 employees works hard to deliver vitally important services for our passengers.
Our vision is to provide solutions for an increasingly congested world… keeping people moving and communities prospering.
First Bus
FirstGroup is one of Britain’s largest bus operators with around a fifth of bus services outside London. A fleet of some 6,300 buses carries approximately 1.7 million passengers a day in a huge number of communities including 40 of the UK's largest towns and cities. We operate some US-style yellow school buses and have a fleet of coaches available for charter. We also operate the Aircoach network in Ireland.