The Motorcoach Marketing Council has issued a request for proposal (RFP) to associations and vendors around the industry seeking a partner for the 10-year-old organization.
“Our objective going forward is to partner with an entity who shares our passion and wants to work with us to achieve our goals,” the council’s RFP states.
Jeff Rogers of First Class Tours in Houston, the council’s board president for the past three years, said the organization has produced many tools and received a lot of support from the industry.
“The last few years have been exciting for the council, and we’ve reached more operators than ever before,” Rogers said.
“With one part-time executive director, a limited budget and a board of volunteers, we’ve been able to accomplish a lot and we are very proud of that,” he said.
“But we want to do more.”
In the future, the council hopes to expand current efforts in order to help motorcoach operators sell more charters, to more people, for more money, said Christian Riddell, the council’s executive director.
“This is the start of a new chapter in the council’s history, one that I am very excited to be a part of,” Riddell said. “We need to find an organization that is as passionate about this work as we are, an entity we can leverage to help us take what we already do and make it even better.
“This is important work; we are talking about the very fundamentals of business in all that we do. If we are able to better leverage marketing in our industry, we can increase demand. An increase in demand makes it possible to increase prices.
“We can solve any number of issues in our industry when we do that, including the driver shortage we are all dealing with,” he said.
While council members are the first to admit there’s a lot of work ahead, they are optimistic about the future.
“We have seen more and more companies want to engage in marketing,” Riddell said. “Though that may not sound like much, desire is the precursor to action.”
Companies or organizations interested in learning more about the council’s RFP can send an email to Riddell at chris@gomotorcoach.org.
