Premium travelling experience

[Weedon]

Please excuse me for not posting this on the other channel but I find that in my retirement I can't be bothered to do a lot of things anymore.

Yesterday, or it might have been last week I heard a spokesman for P&O being interviewed on the radio and he explained that they were reviewing their cross channel operation and in the future would be offering "Premium Travelling Experiences". WHAT.  Mate, what you want to be offering is Low priced, Comfortable and Safe, cross channel crossings.  I reckon most people would prefer to travel by boat across the water to France because its a pleasant way to travel and if you give them what they want more of them would use your boats.  Personally I don't want a "Travelling Experience" and you can forget the "Premium" bit, that to me means loads of dosh and I think you speak loads of tosh.

Weedon(53)

PS.

In spell check it lists dos,bosh,cosh,dash and dish for dosh but no alternatives for tosh?

[Mpprh]

Hi

call me an old fart (will this be auto deleted ?), but .........

I think the ferry companies made a mistake when the tunnel arrived.

They immediately announced, new bigger, faster, more profitable boats. In fact they are too fast. For many people, the benefit of the boat is that you should have time for a relaxed meal to break the journey. Otherwise use the tunnel ?

I'm afraid it works like this :

Journey time = say, 75 minutes

Queue for restaurant 25 minutes

Getting served = 15 minutes

Relaxed meal = ?

So why not just take the tunnel and eat in France for less money (and probably better quality) ?

I should say that I've been crossing the channel for 30+ years. Best service was Townsend Thoreson (and they did a great waiter served breakfast !).

Peter

[bixy]

Yes, Townsend Thoresen were good. The only trouble is, through cutting corners, their ferry sank!

The problem with being on the ferry, apart from it taking a lot longer, is it's too much like being in England. I really don't wish to spend a couple of hours with drunken morons, queueing up for expensive, so-called duty free and eating dreadful, equally expensive food. So it's a sandwich and the tunnel for me every time.

Patrick

[Dick Smith]

I think Peter is right - we enjoy the 'BF Experience' - get to the boat, meal and a drink, cabin, off at 6, house by 7.30. Staff are pleasant, food is OK (not sure about the fish with rhubarb sauce I has last time) and cabins are - well, pretty basic, but you can get a S&S.

[Linnorton]

Having spent last night on the Pride of Bilbao, where foul-mouthed, drunken English men and women roamed the boat all night, I have to say I don't think P&O would recognise a Premium Travelling Experience if it jumped up and bit them on the bum. They do after all promote these booze cruises without warning ordinary passengers what to expect.

[Teamedup]

I'm disappointed to hear that the BF cabins are basic. The first time we used a BF from Caen, my eldest then around 8/9 years old looked around in awe, 'is it a paquebot' he wanted to know. In comparison to all the other vessels we had used up to that time, and we had used most of the other companies, it was luxurious, as was the cabin.

What I'm always after is cheap, fast and basic. I want no more than that from the short crossings. Every quote we have had from the tunnel has been far too expensive.

[JohnM]

[quote]Yes, Townsend Thoresen were good. The only trouble is, through cutting corners, their ferry sank! The problem with being on the ferry, apart from it taking a lot longer, is it's too much like being i...[/quote]

I was told that P&O had just bought Townsend Thoreson and were in the process of rebranding their boats as TT when the accident occurred, so they rebranded back to P&O as fast as they could. I think Will is a shipping expert, is that right?

[Pantouflard]

Yes, TT became part of P&O in the January before HoFE capsized in March 1987.

The report of the enquiry has become a classic case study in how board level attitudes have an effect on day to day operational safety.

[Russethouse]

I agree with Dick, we look forward to a good meal on the ferry and its part of the break....because we are self employed we have long weekends rather than weeks at a time, but now these look expensive with even a 3 day break working out to over £350 just for travel, before accomodation and other expenses.

Some years we have been to France on these weekends, 5 or 6 times, but now the cost makes us think twice.

Perhaps if the company want full boats they should look more at the weekend and short break market generally. This seems to be a booming sector of the tourist industry, but I think people do expect these to breaks to be reasonably priced.

Yes we like to go to the super markets but I don't think we are booze cruisers....we buy lots of different things(even my ironing board is French, it was a deal at the time and I needed one!)

[LesLauriers]

Just had the Speedferries experience and at 25 GBP each way and less than hour to cross it was just the job!

[zeb]

Yep, used Speedferries last week and it was great. I was a bit daunted by the journey to Boulogne (we are in the Charente) but the motorways and even the peripherique, were a doddle. Even with the extra tolls and diesel, it was still much cheaper than flying and hiring a car. And - we could come back with loads of goodies!

Haven't used P and O or BF for years - just need to get across the channel by the cheapest route and there is no way I'll pay all that money to cross (even with slap-up meals and a cinema)! Fight the Pirates, I say!

Fur us, SF was our most favourable PTE!!

regards......helen

PS What's an S&S, Dick? Is it something to do with S&M - is that why so many people still use Brittany Ferries??

[Alcazar]

How can the Ferry companies be serious? (McEnroe mode: off )

I mean, they whine about cheap air fares undercutting them and cutting their profits, but have done nowt over the past 4 years since duty-free disappeared, but RAISE prices, (they went up by 50% in BOTH years following the demise of d/f, and have gone up by a bit less twice since!.)

They seem to have no interest in bringing down fares to fill ferries, even though they are VERY good at putting up prices at peak times to cash in.

They seem to think the holiday traveller, (as against the booze-cruiser or short-breaker), is a cash cow to be milked unmercifully.

Then they wonder why we desert them

 

Alcazar

[BJSLIV]

As has been said many times before we are all suffering because we need to use what is one of the few major transport links in the world that receives no public subsidy.

Few of us realised just how significant a (hidden) subsidy Duty Free was. Not only did it provide passenger volume hence ticket revenue,plus food & drink sales, but the profit margin on duty free sales was enormous.

The ferry companies are now left with high operating costs which they have to recover from a declining market. Their efforts at market segmentation are no different to how the railways operate. I have just checked the price of a return from Birmingham to London , and a standard fare varies from £97 to £33. If they simplified the fare structure on the ferries the fares would probably be at the top end rather than the bottom. Do any of us really understand that cost structures and demand patterns for Channel Crossings?

It will be interesting to see how Speedferries progress. They are trying the low fare approach, but if it fails it won't necessarily be because of the actions of "The Pirates" it might simply be unworkable.

Who knows, perhaps the answer might be a one ship service that waits at Dover  and only sets off when its full. But would we be prepared to accept the uncertainties of such a cheap and miserable service?

[SaligoBay]

Helen16 asked "PS What's an S&S, Dick?"

I've got it!  I reckon for the first S you need some papier cul, and for the second one you need a rasoir.

I've done it again, haven't I? 

[Teamedup]

I think you've got it SB