The Passenger War Begins!

The war for the year-end-Chinese New Year season traveler's buck has begun. The Straits Times has this to report today (13 October 2009).

Hit hard by budget carriers flying their route, express coach companies are starting to fight back.

Case in point:

One company, Transtar Travel, is planning a promotion with half-price tickets to Kuala Lumpur. It will offer $9 (RM21.60) one-way tickets to the first 9,900 customers traveling between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur on its new express coach service.

The offer can be booked at the three-day Travel Malaysia fair starting on Friday at Suntec Convention Centre, where seven bus companies will have booths. These promotional seats are normally priced at $17 and offer the usual perks of reclining seats, shared entertainment screens and a food and beverage bar. One-way express bus tickets range from about $20 to more than $60, depending on how luxurious the coach is.

A Transtar spokesman reiterated that business has been down by about 30 per cent since caps were lifted last December on how many flights budget carriers could make on the route.

Every year, more than 1.5 million people hop on express coaches and head for Kuala Lumpur. Since the opening up of skies between Singapore and Malaysia, however, bus companies are reporting a drop of about 30 per cent to 40 per cent of passenger traffic.

The Singapore-Kuala Lumpur sector is now served by 11 airlines and is the busiest out of Changi Airport, with 498 flights both ways a week.

Flights take about 45 minutes, but passengers need to check in and make a trip to and from the airport, bringing the total time to five hours, similar to traveling by bus.

“We cannot just sit around and hope that we won’t get hurt. We have to come up with ways to bring people back to the buses,” he said.

"Transtar, with a fleet of 50 coaches running the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur sector 12 times a day, is one of the bigger players in the market, so the likelihood is that other companies will follow suit with lower fares soon," he added.

The company's low-fare deal is a promotional offer for a new class of coach service called Transtar Classic. This line will be scaled down from his high-end coach services, which come with 18 reclining seats that double as massage chairs, individual entertainment screens and food from Delifrance. Transtar Classic will have 61 seats and run non-stop to Kuala Lumpur three times a day.

Other bus firms are not sure that competing on price alone is the best strategy.

Hasry Singapore, a competitor, said lower fares would attract more people, but sustainability would be an issue. He is considering raising the level of service and convenience instead, like having Internet connection on the bus.

For construction firm owner Brandon Lim, who takes the bus regularly to Malaysia, the perks mean little. “Planes don’t get me door-to-door, and I have to spend extra time and money on getting to and from the airport. Bus is always better,” he said.

I think he's got a point there!