Inverness bus firm D&E Coaches set for recruitment drive in preparation for the return of large cruise liners to Highland ports with demand for trips to attractions like Culloden Battlefield and Loch Ness
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The expected return of lucrative cruise liner visits to the Highlands has prompted the region’s largest coach operator to go on a recruitment drive.
After a tough couple of years due to the coronavirus pandemic, Inverness-based D&E Coaches expects to cater for tens of thousands of passengers this summer, ferrying them to and from Highland ports and sightseeing hotspots including Culloden Battlefield and Loch Ness.
The firm is now looking to take on an additional 10 coach drivers to cope with the expected demand.
“It’s been an extremely challenging couple of years after we’d worked so hard to carve such a large slice of the north market,” managing director Donald Mathieson said.
“But the improving picture on the pandemic front is making all the difference and we’ve secured bookings from liners calling at Invergordon, Scrabster, Ullapool, Portree, Fort William and Oban from this spring.”
More than 40,000 passengers are booked on 22 liners calling at Port of Cromarty Firth from April to October.
The 167,000 tonnes Royal Carribbean liner Anthem of the Seas carrying 4000 passengers will be the largest to dock at Invergordon.
Celebrity Silhouette will make six visits to the port, with 2500 passengers each time, and Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth will bring 2000 passengers.
Gayle MacEwan, who heads up D&E’s cruise department, said: “The emails have been flooding in from shipping agents for more than 100 liner arrivals, booking us to take their guests on trips.
“It’s great to see the cruise business returning as so many high-spending passengers is good for the Highland economy just when it needs a lift.
“We start on April 2 at Ullapool and we’re scheduled to be busy right through at ports on the east and west coasts. We’re talking of some 50,000 passenger journeys on excursions, which is much greater than we’d been ready to handle before the virus struck.”
