Hey PH-ers!
We’re stoked to introduce Sharethebus to the PH community today. In 2014, our co-founders Wolf and Kyle realized that getting to music festivals was too damn hard, so they sought to solve that problem. Thus, Sharethebus was born.
Now it’s grown into a much bigger animal. In the last year we’ve moved 50,000 people across 200 cities to all kinds of events. It’s been an incredible journey.
As anyone who’s ever tried to organize a bus trip can attest, the process can be quite cumbersome!
Today we’re proud to announce we’re the first company that allows you to reserve an entire bus for any trip in the U.S. and Canada, all within a minute.
To learn more about our product, check out this blog post. We’d love to get your feedback on the product, hit us up in the comments or shoot me an email at dave@sharethebus.com.
@dlasto I think it's a great idea to tackle this market. Trying to hire a mini-bus for a short trip to the airport, rugby, amsterdam, stag do etc has always been a pain in the arse!
I know someone who started a similar service but the trouble he was having was that bus/coach companies (especially locally) tend to be smaller, family-run with older owners who historically used phone and more recently, email to take their bookings... When presented with the service to help streamline this and drum up more business was met with the classical 'sounds interesting, let us know further down the line'.
My suggestion to him at the time was to allow users to go through the booking on the site, and for the final booking/inquiry, they get to email the bus company directly but keep something like "referral from website.com" so that when you go back to the company you can say... look we sent you X bookings this month. Gives you leverage and they can already see the benefit. You may have to dip into your own pockets for a while but I think it would be the best way to tackle the old-school style of some of these companies.
What is your strategy? Have you encountered similar situations?
@bentossell This is great feedback.
So this is something that isn't unique in this space. A non-internet industry has a hard time seeing the value of being online. We've found the best way to make this work is to show companies the business you're able to bring them, and spend time looking for charter companies that understand what you're building. They do exist!
We have strong relationships with our bus suppliers, and they took a long time to build. But over the last year they've seen that we're able to drive real value for them, and that's made the difference.
Our ultimate vision is to bring a full stack Sharethebus experience to all parties involved. One that's tech featured, customer focused, and seamless for all parties involved.
@bentossell Honestly it's just trial and error for us. Send companies business, evaluate how the trip went riders, and decide if we can make it work between us.
Truthfully, our co-founder Wolf is a bus expert. He's been organizing bus trips since he was 16 in Germany. At the end of the day, he knows exactly what he's looking for in a company and charter companies tend to appreciate his expertise in buses and the internet.
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