Trailways Transportation Readies a New Path for 2022 and Beyond Elects Amy Brooks first female Board Chair, spotlights digital ticket and charter sales growth, launches new customer service driver training and awards top driver talent during busy annual meeting
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Article and photos courtesy of Pat Plodzeen
railways’ January 2022 annual meeting ahead of the ABA Marketplace in Grapevine, Texas, Trailways marked several important milestones.
The leading travel brand elected its first female board chair in its 85-year history and showcased its latest innovations. Trailways will add a cloud-based charter leadgeneration to its Trailways.com bus ticket web platform this year and has launched a new customer service training program for drivers.
New Board Chair Amy Brooks, vice president of sales for Susquehanna Trailways, Avis, Pennsylvania succeeds Patrick Dean, vice president of Dean Transportation, Lansing, Michigan. Dean remains on the board. Brooks, a Trailways board member since 2019, has a 40-year career with Susquehanna Trailways, a third generation, family-owned motorcoach company. She has built technology solutions at her company and knows how new digital solutions will help Trailways and stockholders’ bus businesses grow.
Brooks first worked at Susquehanna after college where she answered phones for eight months before leaving to attend graduate school at Eastern Illinois University’s College of Business and Technology. When she returned to her hometown and rejoined Susquehanna in 1981, she conceptualized the company’s first digital tour reservation tracking system, which improved operations and customer satisfaction. She grew sales and rose through the ranks.
When she joined the Susquehanna team in 1981, they were a school bus operator with three charter coaches. “Today we have 30 coaches,” said Brooks. “We became a Trailways member in 1982. My boss, Carl Kephart Jr., told me he was considering joining Trailways and asked me what I thought. Adding Trailways to the end of Susquehanna’s name added instant familiarity, credibility and respectability in the travel marketplace.” 24 • National Bus Trader / April, 2022
Trailways held their 2022 annual meeting in Grapevine, Texas in January, scheduled ahead of the ABA Marketplace. As in the past it combined organizational business with seeing friends and meeting with industry suppliers. Noteworthy events included the election of their first female board chair, improved online systems and the traditional driver awards.
Trailways’ future: digital closeness to customers Trailways’ future is mobile in more ways than one. On smartphone and desktop, Brooks says, “We want Trailways.com to become the one-stop-shop for anything travel, whether a customer wants to purchase a bus ticket to a city destination or book a charter for a group trip or tour.” A more powerful Trailways.com “will lead to greater growth for current members and help attract operators who never thought of becoming Trailways members until now.” Trailways established a new marketing division in 2019 focused solely on the digital growth innovation for the Trailways brand, naming Alexander Berardi president, and launching its very own Trailways.com online ticket sales Web site for affiliated and other
carriers that same year. Berardi, who is from a well-known bus industry family, manages the day-to-day operations of the comprehensive Web site and is supported by a dedicated team responsible for 24/7 monitoring of Web site booking transactions, customer service and implementing cutting-edge digital marketing strategies targeting consumers both at the regional level and on a national scale.
“Our priority is to convert browsing visitors into paying customers,” said Berardi. “I’m proud to say we now have the technology and a growing team in place to make that happen. By combining resources and leveraging the national brand, we have done for our stockholders what some carriers found difficult on their own: near instant advertising to customers that visit the Trail-