We can help to create a ticketing solution that is great value for festival goers.
Passenger Count - Leeds Festival - 35,200
Passenger Count - Love Supreme - 4,600
Team Work
We love a festival - but we don’t go for the music - we go to move people safely and efficiently - adding to their great weekend of fun without them even realising.
We are proud of our ongoing work with Love Supreme, Leeds Festival, and Boardmasters, all of these festivals we have been supporting for over 6 years now!
We highlighted just three of our festivals here!
The Solutions
Love Supreme
One of the country’s premier jazz festivals takes place at Glynde Place near Brighton in early July and is attended by around 5,000 fans. FirstTravel Solutions (FTS) has provided transport solutions for six years, comprising shuttle and timetabled bus services between Brighton and Glynde rail stations and the festival site.
Many of the festival goers camp at the site and attend the full weekend festivities, meaning that the transport provision also had to accommodate the movement of tents, bags, and equipment alongside people.
FTS, planned routes, procured vehicles, set up city centre locations to support those arriving in Brighton by rail, coordinated queuing and boarding, provided pop-up sales points, and managed the onsite temporary bus station.
Customers could book onto time-specific shuttles from Brighton rail station to the site, which helped manage crowds, but FTS employed sufficient flexibility in the operation to account for late arrivals and peak time surges.
Leeds Festival
FTS have supported this massive event for several years and used their experience and expertise to deliver a comprehensive travel solution that was much more than the standard shuttle service.
Recognising the complexities of moving tens of thousands of festival-goers, planning for the event starts months in advance and involves the entire FTS team.
As many attendees initially travel by rail into Leeds city centre, the team identified suitable pick-up and drop-off points within the station's easy reach.
On the ground, coordinators are in constant radio contact with the buses' staging site and can call in the fleet as and when needed. Over the course of six days, FTS successfully transferred more than 20,000 music fans via 500 bus journeys.
Boardmasters
Boardmasters is one of Cornwall’s biggest festivals, mixing top-end music entertainment, beach and surfing activities and sports. It attracts around 50,000 festival-goers over a five-day early August period to the usually much quieterWatergate Bay and Fistral Beach near Newquay.
Parking on-site is extremely limited, and FTS were asked to develop and operate bus shuttles that would transport 45,000 fans to and from Newquay town centre and the festival sites.
FTS developed a plan that provided bus connections between Newquay’s bus and rail stations and the Watergate and Fistral beaches.
The shuttles were in operation each day between 0700-0400 and carried festival goers and tonnes of camping equipment and personal belongings.
Cash handling was managed safely and securely, but FTS introduced advance ticketing and m-tickets via the FirstGroup app to ease queuing and transaction times.
25 staff were rostered across the various sites and were on hand to manage queues, bus loadings, ticketing operations and temporary bus stations at festival sites.
Vehicles were tracked, and onsite management control was able to flex the services as needed and respond to additional requirements, such as staff buses to assist with beach cleaning.
The operation was a tremendous success and delivered against several key indicators. Nearly 1,500 bus journeys were completed, and 56,000 attendees used the shuttle services.
This reduced car movement in and around Newquay and the festival by over a third and meant residents and event goers all got to where they needed to be when needed.
The Result
Another successful FTS operation carried thousands of festival goers, their equipment and supplies and a fair few saxophones and guitars.
These successful services are supporting organisers in demonstrating to local authorities their commitment to staging a transport-considered event.
All buses provided were fully accessible and tracked by FTS in Event Control.