GTS Travel, until now involved in the sale of student and business stays and student tickets, has decided to enter the market for regional bus transport. It will soon become a competitor to Student Agency on the route from Prague to Liberec.
GTS Travel buses will start running on 16 March twelve times a day. The ticket will cost CZK 70, CZK 25 lower than the Student Agency fare.
The Prague-Liberec bus service is the first stage of a new project aimed to provide the company’s clients with better access to the Prague Airport. The company plans to launch services to other towns in the future. “A decision on new routs will be made only after we analyse the Liberec connection,” GTS Travel spokesman Tomáš Fomenko told E15. More bus stops should appear in locations where GTS Travel has its branches – Plzeň, Pardubice, Ostrava and Brno. The company is also holding preliminary talks with the Eurolines transport provider on operating the route from Prague to Hradec Králové. Eurolines buses already operate there, but GTS Travel would provide its marketing patronage.
GTS Travel will offer the new Prague-Liberec service in cooperation with the Liberec city transport company Dopravní podnik města Liberce (DPML). “We do not perceive the regional transport entry as competition, but as a way to make travelling more pleasant for Liberec citizens and extend the portfolio of services offered to them,” said Martina Poršová of the DPML press department. She believes that especially older people will welcome the new bus line because they will no longer have to go to the more distant bus station from where Student Agency dispatches its buses, but will be able to change directly at the city transport terminal.
Student Agency had earlier expressed interest in having a stop for its buses at this terminal. The company even offered CZK 1 million to the city transport operator, DPML head Jiří Veselka said. “But the capacity of the terminal is very stretched already now. We had to rearrange the bus station to be able to get our line there at all,” Veselka said.
