Merry Christmas at the business engagement event of Bournemouths Christmas Tree Wonderland
Bournemouth will be turned into a Christmas Tree Wonderland this festive season – with Yellow Buses as the official transport providers.
The town will be festooned with dozens of trees in a bid to turn the summer resort into a forest of festive fun.
Amongst the arboreal Yuletide offerings will be a 60ft video tree that visitors can walk through, illuminated trees from around the world and even a walk-through bauble.
Businesses are being encouraged to join in and create their own displays to help attract visitors.
The wonderland is a partnership between Bournemouth Tourism, Bournemouth Town Centre Bid, Bournemouth Coastal Bid and attraction providers.
Yellow Buses is the official transport partner for the next four years and managing director David Squire was at the business engagement event along with mascot Buster Bear and two giant Christmas puddings.
He said: “Everyone knows Bournemouth is a summer resort, but we want people to think of visiting over Christmas.
“We had an excellent event on the pier with many businesses hearing from the official partners about the plans. The town is going to look amazing.
“As transport providers we will be using an open top bus to carry passengers through the town from Boscombe across to Westbourne; there is going to be so much going on.
“All this is to encourage people from the town to come out and join in the festivities, but also to attract visitors from outside.
“Tourism is a huge part of the economy in the summer and we want to help bring a bit of that income back during the winter months.”
Jon Weaver, Head of Resort Marketing and Events, Bournemouth and Poole Tourism, said: “We want to make Bournemouth into one of the top Christmas destinations in the UK and Christmas Tree Wonderland will give a truly magical reason for people to visit.
“It is fantastic that Yellow Buses have joined us as a key event sponsor and there has been huge enthusiasm for the event.
“Local businesses now have a golden opportunity to get involved whether it’s through sponsorship or creating their own show piece trees in store.
“So please get in touch and see how your business can really reap the rewards over the important Christmas period.”
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Note to journalists:
For more information, please contact: Andrew Diprose, Director, Deep South Media Ltd, PR consultants to Yellow Buses, on 01202 534487, or Ed Baker on 01202 534487 or 07788 392965.
For more information on Christmas Tree Wonderland visit www.christmastreewonderland.co.uk
About Yellow Buses: Yellow Buses operates a fleet of 140 buses and 16 coaches with more than 410 staff.
The company carries just under 15m passengers a year with its vehicles operating nearly five million miles across the Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch and East Dorset area.
Yellow Buses is part of RATP Group, the world’s fifth largest public transport provider.
RATP Dev in the United Kingdom and Ireland
The United Kingdom is a strategic market for RATP Dev with revenues in excess of £300 million and a workforce of over 4,500.
RATP Dev’s presence in the United Kingdom comprises the following activities:
- RATP Dev London, through its subsidiaries London United, London Sovereign and Quality Line:
– employs 3,400 staff
– operates more than 1,000 buses under contract to Transport for London (TfL)
– transports more than 200 million passengers per annum in the British capital
- Under the Yellow Buses brand, RATP Dev’s subsidiary Bournemouth Transport operates award-winning commercial bus services in and around Bournemouth. Further de-regulated bus services are provided also by the Bath Bus Company.
- RATP Dev has significant coach operations, primarily through Epsilon Travel (Surrey) and Selwyns Travel (Cheshire).
- RATP Dev is a major player in the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing bus tour activity. Following its 2014 acquisition of The Original London Sightseeing Tour, RATP Dev now has operations of this kind in London, as well as Paris and New York.
- In 2015, RATP Dev launched Slide, an innovative minibus service in Bristol, using digital technology to offer personalised transport to non-bus users on a route and at a time of their choosing via an app.
About RATP Dev
Founded in 2002, RATP Dev operates and maintains urban transportation systems in 14 countries on four continents (United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, Algeria, Morocco, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, China, South Korea, the Philippines, and the United States of America). With more than 1.5 billion passengers travelling on its networks every year, RATP Dev demonstrates every day its extensive and renowned expertise in a wide range of mobility services, ranging from rail, regional express rail, tramway, to bus, cable car and sightseeing activities. RATP Dev leverages in France, outside of Paris, and across international markets, the technical expertise and experience of RATP Group, the leader in driverless and tramway operations and operator of the Paris network, one of the largest public transportation networks in the world.
About RATP Group
With nearly 16 million daily passengers worldwide, RATP Group is the fifth largest urban transportation operator in the world. With its 14 metro lines (including two driverless lines), two regional express rail lines, seven tramway lines and 350 bus lines, the multimodal network operated by RATP in the Paris region is the largest in the world to be managed by a single company.
RATP Group can devise, design and implement infrastructure development projects, operate and maintain networks irrespective of the mode of transportation (metro, regional train, tramway and bus) and develop innovative services to promote mobility (including passenger information, remote ticketing, pricing and customer marketing). The automation of the Paris metro’s line 1 completed at the end of 2012 is a world’s first and once again demonstrated RATP Group skill in concluding particularly complex projects.
RATP Group exports its know-how all over the world; in engineering through Systra, its subsidiary jointly owned with SNCF, in operations and maintenance via its wholly-owned RATP Dev subsidiary and in innovative services to promote mobility through its IXXI subsidiary.
RATP Group has a workforce of nearly 60,000 employees worldwide and in 2016 generated revenue of 5.4 billion euros.
