The famous Blue Mountains Explorer Bus red double-decker sightseeing fleet will be back on route seven days from Saturday, December 17, after a fitful three years.
One of the longest running tourism businesses in Australia’s first tourist destination, the fleet was parked indefinitely in July 2021.
Managing director of Fantastic Aussie Tours (FAT) which owns the fleet, Jason Cronshaw, said one hop-on/hop-off bus had recently trundled the sightseeing circuit around Leura and Katoomba on Saturdays and public holidays “mainly as a marketing exercise to keep the buses in the public eye’’.
“Without international visitors, it just wasn’t viable to do more,’’ he said.
“Now that the number of overseas guests is growing, we can operate seven days once more, albeit with just one bus.’’
He says the past three years had been the toughest experienced by the company, which was forced to sell four out of six double-decker explorer buses and half of its overall fleet.
The Blue Mountains Explorer Bus idled for 27 days over December 2019 – January 2020 because of the bushfires and reported a 60% drop in passengers.
During the weekend of March 14-15, 2020, numbers plummeted a further 50% almost overnight due to COVID-19.
Then, just days later, the Explorer Bus services were slashed from 15 a day to seven, with 2.5 drivers a day to one.
The fleet then operated only on weekends and holidays, with the average weekly driver roster of 350 hours dropping to 78.
Meanwhile parent company, FAT, suffered an 85% drop in charter work and forward cancellations from schools and corporates and other group travel.
Work picked up but came to an abrupt halt when the five-month lockdown was declared in July 2021.
“Every time we reopened there was another lockdown, so in the end we just closed indefinitely. It wasn’t viable to drive a 77-seater bus out of the depot for one or two people,” says Mr Cronshaw.
“It costs us $3.50 per kilometre on a 26km circuit and tickets are $49 for an all-day pass. The maths just didn’t add up.’’
During the pandemic, Mr Cronshaw himself drove a morning and afternoon bus run for a local private school to feed his own family.
He now also works as head of operations at Scenic World, another long-time Blue Mountains tourist attraction.
“It was the only way to keep the business going (albeit on skeleton staff),” Mr Cronshaw said.
“Thankfully I love my job at Scenic World and it’s actually been rejuvenating, but the past three years has been really tough.
“However, I’m only one of so many business owners with assets and staff with families to feed.”
FAT did attempt to adapt the business to no avail.
“The analogy of doing a three-point turn in a three-metre-wide laneway in a double-decker bus comes to mind,” Mr Cronshaw said.
“Everything we tried was stalled by lockdown or border closures.
“It was crushing to see the business my parents established slipping away.”
However, he is confident that fortunes have now begun to turn with encouraging inbound visitor numbers across Australia including the Blue Mountains.
“I’m not holding my breath for pre-pandemic visitation numbers for a while yet, but we are seeing a steady influx of international guests,” he said.
