Anderson Tours finalist at the 2013 British Youth Travel Awards for Best Leisure Product

Anderson Tours’ Supporting statement for BEST LEISURE PRODUCT award

Service that we provide
For 25 years Anderson Tours have been successfully providing first class sightseeing tours throughout the UK and Europe at affordable, low prices to enable everyone to travel, learn and enjoy!
Our value for money tours allow students and the youth market in particular, to travel to places that they might not otherwise be able to a) afford , b) get to by themselves and c) appreciate using informative but entertaining guides.

How we deliver a successful customer experience

Here at Anderson Tours we know that are customers are happy and satisfied – because they tell us!
We undertake regular customer satisfaction surveys and the results of the most recent are enclosed! (appendix 1). We provide professional tours that include all entrances with no hidden extras which gives us an edge over our competitors. We believe in transparency – what you see is what you get, we are always open and honest with customers which works in our favour. We regularly receive praise for our tours via emails and phone calls (appendix 2). Due to the large number of students travelling with us (24,000 last year), our tours are of the more cultural, informative, history focused variety providing an educational element that looks to inspire and enlighten the youth, student market. What’s more, along with our scheduled trips, Anderson Tours organise private group tours which are customised to our client’s needs. The majority of our private business comes from top private Universities in London.

Adaption and continuous improvement

We continuously strive to improve our products (tours) and services, and regular surveys are just one way of achieving this. We also take on board customer emails and suggestions, for example all of our tours now include entrances to attractions/sites e.g entrance into Stonehenge and the Roman Baths are both included in the tour price as this is what our customers prefer. They do not want to pay out extra once they get to a location!
So as to keep up with customer trends and preferred destinations our Marketing team regularly visit our language school and University agents across London to better understand the needs and desires of the youth market. We ask the question how better to improve our service and also whether there are destinations that we currently don’t visit that students want to travel to. We adapt our services according to the needs of the market. An example of this would be our creation of the ‘Canterbury, Greenwich and River Cruise’ tour for summer 2014 as a result of passenger desires to see GMT, the well-publicised opening of the Cutty Sark as seen in the news recently, and the fantastic pictures of the naval college viewed worldwide at last year’s Olympic Games. Furthermore, we have improved and adapted our existing products in terms of means of transport. We now offer our tour services by rail due to customer preference – we travel to Edinburgh and York by train and our Paris tour goes by Eurostar which takes under 2.5 hours meaning passengers have more time to explore this beautiful city!

Furthermore, Anderson Tours look at customer seasonal needs. The majority of our youth customers are international; either studying at University or at a London English language school, thus we have identified a need to offer longer breaks over the Christmas period as many will not / cannot return to their home countries. Tours such as our ‘Christmas in Paris’ 4 day trip are therefore ideal for these students and mean that they don’t need to spend Christmas alone. Our tours are made up of individuals from various backgrounds from all over the world, so we provide an opportunity to meet people from different cultures and nationalities, although everyone has one thing in common- a shared interest in travelling!!

Innovation

In terms of creativity, we have completely redesigned a new website with a fresh new corporate brand image which will be launched shortly. This will help keep our product relevant to our main market – the youth market.
The new site will enable them to share their experiences more effectively and interact with each other via our networking sites. We use social media such as Facebook and an E Blog to encourage the youth market to share their experiences and photos with one another. We have now gained over 3,000 likes on Facebook!

Anderson Tours are always bringing new ideas to the table and innovation certainly helps us to gain repeat business. Online promotional codes enable us to reward repeat business by giving discounts to our valued customers that are keen to travel with us again and again! We have regular customers that travel with us who feel a part of the family!

Of course we also seek to attract many new customers, one way in which Anderson Tours do this is to promote and run competitions/raffles to win tours through our schools and Universities, which aids both the institution as well as the various charities that they support including Heart Children’s Home, Expand, Cancer Research and Go Make it Happen. We offer free of charge day tours for them to put in their raffles or sell for charity. We also have a relationship with the Action For Blind charity where we provide drivers free of charge for their vehicles. More about the charity and our relationship is detailed in the enclosed newsletters which we send out to both staff and customers (appendix 3). Anderson Tours enjoy supporting the local community as well as the education system in the UK.

Commitment to health and safety

Our health and safety records are second to none. Before every trip the tour guide emphasises the need for every person to wear a seatbelt in order to comply with UK law. The group is also shown where emergency exits are at the start. We have a fleet of 27 luxury coaches which are all under 3 years old and produce extremely low CO2 emissions – Anderson Tours ensure that we are not detrimental to the environment. We take the stance that we invest now in order to benefit everyone in the future – we invested 4.5 million pounds in new vehicles this year alone. Our passengers travel on luxury coaches, not the typical school bus! All vehicles feature reclining seats with seatbelts, full air-conditioning, PA system and large panoramic windows for sightseeing. Our company is part of CoachMarque which is an independently audited kite mark of quality. Only 40 companies have been accepted to belong to this accreditation.

Concluding Summary

Anderson Tours would absolutely love to win the award for Best Leisure Product and our company as well as our customers believe we should win for our efforts in keeping down tour prices for young travellers, continuously striving to improve our services and products and making leisure tours enjoyable whilst adding to young peoples’ education and knowledge about the history of fascinating places around the UK and Europe including historical sites such as Stonehenge, Bath , Avebury, Oxford, Cambridge and many more! With more and more investment into the travel industry from Anderson Tours we can only continue to grow our business and to improve the experiences of the youth market here in the UK.