National Express has reported its busiest ever festive period with more people choosing to travel by coach as passenger numbers for both Christmas Day and Boxing Day surpassed last year’s record figures.
The UK’s largest coach operator carried more passengers than ever before over Christmas with Friday 27 December 2019 being reported as the busiest single day for travel in the company’s history with over 78,000 passenger journeys.
Passengers travelling on Christmas Day increased by an impressive 27%, and by 5% on Boxing Day compared to 2018.
The figures provide an interesting insight into how people spend their time in the 21st century, particularly over the festive period.
Chris Hardy, managing director for National Express Coach, said: “We’re moving towards a 24/7 society where there is an expectation for services to be available around the clock, regardless of the time of year.
“With families more spread out than ever before and an increasing number of people working over the festive period, demand for coach travel at this time keeps getting stronger.”
The addition of extra coach services rescued the festive period for travellers who had to once again contend with widespread rail disruption. With trains not running on Christmas Day, limited services on Boxing Day, South Western Railways strikes ongoing for the whole of December and 386 rail engineering projects taking place over the festive period; National Express kept people moving in the last few weeks of 2019.
Chris Hardy continued: “We’re well known for providing great value travel all year round and we’re conscious that this is especially important to our customers at Christmas, when there are very limited travel options.
“But we’re also being chosen because we offer unrivalled connectivity across the UK.”
National Express is the UK’s largest coach operator, running 1,900 plus services each day (2,100+ on a Friday) . It also operates services direct to the terminal for all major UK airports 24 hours a day with 1,100 airport services every day.
