Coach Atlantic Group 'hunkering down', forecasts $30M revenue drop

The owner of Coach Atlantic Group says his company is projecting revenue losses of $30 million this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mike Cassidy says the crisis is impacting every area of his business.

"There wouldn't be many companies in the Maritimes that would be facing that type of revenue drop,"  said Cassidy. "It just so happens there's no cruise ship, there's no multi day tours, and group charters right now are non existent, and that's a huge component of our business."

Cassidy says Coach Atlantic's scheduled interprovincial bus routes have also been hit hard. Schedules have been reduced to three days a week with around 80 passengers a day travelling throughout the system.

That's down from around 500 passengers a day. The loss of business in all the company's divisions is having a serious impact on its workforce.

"Normally at this time, I have 350 to 400 people that we invite back for our whole bus driver fleet, our tour operator fleet," he said. "We can't invite them back this year because there is no work. And it's very discouraging, very discouraging as an owner that I can't bring my people back."

Cassidy says because there is no business at all on the tour side, the company is unable to take advantage of the federal wage subsidy program for many of his employees.

He says the impact of COVID-19 on the Maritimes' tourism economy will be huge.

Many in the industry, he says, are talking about 'going dark' for a year, meaning they may shut down their operations completely and make plans to reopen in 2021.

The multi-day tour part of Coach Atlantic's operations, for instance, books 85,000 hotel room-nights in a season. 

All of those bookings are now off the table. Cassidy expects many restaurants and tourist accommodation businesses in the region will not open at all this year.

His goal now is to ensure his group of companies can survive the pandemic crisis.

"We're going to try to hunker down, we're going to try to take advantage of any programs that we are eligible for provincially and federally. And as the owner of the company I'm not going to say we are going to go dark."