00:00Kai, it's been almost two years since we've last spoke.
00:05It's good to have you back on the program.
00:06It's a very different environment than when you last joined us.
00:10Flights are more expensive.
00:12Jet fuel is their shortage of jet fuel in parts of the world.
00:16Here in the U.S., gas is more expensive.
00:19How is your business right now?
00:22Our business is strong.
00:24I mean, intercity bus is the most cost-effective option by far.
00:27I mean, if you just look at New York City and D.C. distance and people can travel on bus,
00:34it's a fraction of the railways or airlines' cost.
00:37Budget clearly matters.
00:39And fuel increase also drives shift demand historically from personal cars to intercity bus.
00:47And that's why we're seeing it right now.
00:49You know, it's interesting.
00:50I have a daughter who is up in Boston and who has taken Amtrak several times,
00:55but she's also increasingly taking the bus.
00:58It's less expensive.
00:59I think maybe less delays she's seen.
01:03But it's interesting.
01:04And I think she was a little bit surprised how much she liked taking a bus.
01:09That's spot on.
01:10I mean, what we see is generations are less likely to have a driving license.
01:15They like their comfort and convenience.
01:17And spot on, reliability plays an important part of the equation right now.
01:22And we have increased our reliability massively.
01:25I mean, 97% of the time, we depart on time, the schedule of time.
01:30And 85%, we arrive on time.
01:33That's second to none and way better than airlines and railways.
01:37So, what we see is a continued increase in the number of passengers on our buses year after year.
01:44I'm wondering about the split between Flixbus in the U.S. and Greyhound
01:48and sort of how you position those two brands and how you're positioning the Greyhound brand,
01:52which is seen, I think, by a lot of people as a real legacy brand in an environment where there
01:59are some newer upstarts.
02:01I mean, Flixbus and Greyhound are two very strong brands for us.
02:08Approximately more than 40% of our business is in Flixbus and more than 50% is in Greyhound.
02:14And what we do mostly is Flixbus, really strong in the East Coast and the West Coast, shorter distances.
02:22And where Greyhound comes in, it connects multiple states together and becomes the pipe for the long distance travel.
02:31Tell us a little bit about the demand that you're seeing.
02:34I mean, has it increased year over year?
02:36What moves the needle?
02:37And I know some of what we've been thinking about here in the newsroom is like when you saw the
02:41Spirit shut down,
02:43did you guys see an uptick in business?
02:45Oh, yes.
02:46Significant increase in demand with the Spirit shut down.
02:49We saw over that weekend more than 30% increase in ridership on overlapping lines.
02:56I think we have more than 120 overlapping lines with Spirit.
02:59So that was an opportunity for many travelers to experience a reliable and comfortable service.
03:07So intercity bus is clearly a strong alternative.
03:11When there is a kind of disruption with the airports, airways, the airlines or railways,
03:18or especially when there's a big travel period, we are a very strong alternative to them.
03:23What's the sweet spot, though, for somebody who makes the choice,
03:26okay, I'm not going to fly, I'm actually going to take a bus instead?
03:29It works for something like New York to Washington or New York to Boston, for example.
03:34It doesn't work for New York to California.
03:38It depends what you're looking for in that instance.
03:41I mean, our strongest competition is when it comes to the travel time is up to 12 hours.
03:49So that's where we're really strong versus alternative modes of transport.
03:54So what does that look like in the U.S. in terms of city to city?
03:58I mean, that covers a vast majority of Northeast lines, A to Vs, all the city pairs mostly.
04:04It covers also multiple.
04:06I mean, if you look at the Southeast, we cover a majority of cities there.
04:09If you want to move from one region to another and you have the time,
04:13then what we offer is reliable service, clearly on-time performance is stellar.
04:18And the second one is comfortable service.
04:20Your first-class seat, you rest and relax, and you've got Wi-Fi all the way through,
04:25a strong Wi-Fi network.
04:26And on the way, you can see and enjoy the United States, the beautiful scenery where possible.
04:32Kai, coming into you, we talked about, we really were kind of surprised,
04:36our producer, Cece, who fell into your TikTok account and kind of shocked that you guys have
04:43a million followers.
04:45I am curious, tell us about what goes into what you guys program and has that,
04:52every time I see the dancing bus, it does make me laugh.
04:55What has that done in moving the needle in terms of bringing in younger customers?
05:00And I am curious about the demographics of who are getting on buses.
05:06I mean, we welcome all walks of life and kind of, we've got everybody from every segment.
05:13But you're right.
05:15We attract disproportionately young people, Generation Z mostly, coming on our buses and enjoying.
05:21And how we attract them, I mean, number one is clearly, is being on time, reliable service.
05:27They want to make sure that they don't have any surprises like they see at the airports,
05:31long queues or delays and cancellations.
05:34That's number one.
05:34Reliability is really important.
05:37Connecting more locations.
05:38I mean, we connect more than 1,800 stops in this region.
05:43And that's far more than airlines as well as railways combined.
05:47And not only cities, we reach the rural communities.
05:50So it's possible for anybody to hop on a bus and travel all the way to this final destination
05:55without changing actually mode of travel.
05:57So what happens is that we, with that on our mind, that what we see is we continue to grow
06:02lines, add new lines to our network.
06:05I mean, just in the course of last two months, we added more than 25 lines to our network, new
06:11lines,
06:11to make sure that our network is growing.
06:13And we are meeting the demand out there.
06:16So the growth is out there for us with the reliable service.
06:19But the demographics, who's getting on the bus?
06:21Is it increasingly a younger population?
06:23Is it a mixture?
06:25Has it really not changed in the last few years?
06:28I mean, one of the bigger segments for us is clearly young segments, students, university students.
06:35That's where we attract, but we also attract the retirees who've got the time and like to travel on a
06:40reliable platform.
06:41And some people prefer not to fly.
06:43They come to us as well.
06:44So all walks of life, we welcome and we have kind of presence from all walks of life.
06:50But you're right, Generation Z and students are one of our biggest segments.
06:55We're speaking with Kai Boysen, Flix North America CEO, joins us from Dallas.
07:00Hey, Kai, the areas of innovation for Flixbus and for Greyhound, what are they?
07:06You mentioned Wi-Fi.
07:07Is it Starlink?
07:09I mean, I guess you don't even need Starlink.
07:10You could use cellular.
07:11But like, you know, how fast is it?
07:14Where can you innovate to continue to attract younger demographics?
07:18I mean, obviously, we work with one of the prominent telecommunications service providers here in the United States.
07:25And we're very happy with the service.
07:26So it would be like, that would be like a Verizon, AT&T, AT-Mobile type of company?
07:30Yes, correct.
07:30One of those.
07:31Yes.
07:31And in addition, we also do real-time actually updates to our services, just pre-onboarding, during onboard service and
07:40after offboarding.
07:42What is really critical is to make sure that our travelers, our passengers are up to speed as to where
07:47we are, when we're going to arrive, if there's any delay.
07:50So it's really critical.
07:51Our platform enables that massively, and also not only with the passengers, but the bus operators are all coming together,
07:57making sure that we provide a seamless experience.
08:01I mean, our motto is kind of happy experience, happy rider experience always comes back with incremental actual revenue for
08:09us.
08:09So we're going the extra mile to make sure that each and everybody is happy with that experience.
08:14And that comes with reliability, comfortability, and obviously cost-effectiveness.
08:20Bringing that all together with many connections will make that difference.
08:24And innovation for us is not only kind of once we've got the customer on board and that's done and
08:31dusted.
08:31No, innovation is a continuous force.
08:33We always look out what are the best search options available, what are the best pairs that we can bring
08:38so that we can provide the option to our travelers to travel from, let's say, from a distance, that it
08:47needs to actually connect with multiple buses.
08:50So it's a continuous operation, and we leverage AI in that way strongly to find the optimal service.
08:57Kai, before you go, we do want to squeeze in.
09:00We've got about 40 seconds left here.
09:01Are you seeing any bookings around the World Cup, especially as we've heard other options are really expensive?
09:06Just quickly.
09:08Okay.
09:09Yes, we're seeing a strong demand already with the peak.
09:12And we know that the World Cup is a huge, large-scale event, and it's going to make a difference.
09:17Ridership is increasing.
09:19Early bookings, especially in the Northeast, we cover all 16 cities.
09:23So this is a large-scale event, and it's going to put pressure on the infrastructure for cities.
09:28And what we do is we increase where we see an uptick in demand, we increase our schedules.
09:34So we help reduce the pressure on the city infrastructure, and we work very collaboratively with the cities and local
09:41transit authorities to make sure the fan experience is superb.
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