As Bus and Motorcoach industry veterans know in North America, January and February of every year is “conference time.” This year Betterez, the global leader in Bus & Coach sales and inventory management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), participated in the Trailways conference in Orlando, Florida, and American Bus Association Marketplace and Busworld North America, co-located in Detroit, Michigan.
As a key supplier to the scheduled, per capita industry segment, at these conferences we can stay close to the industry’s priorities, spend time with current customers, meet new carriers, evaluate partnerships and support our industry as they give back in such areas as scholarships and charities. Read on for a glimpse into Betterez’s experiences at this year’s conferences.
Trailways, Orlando, Florida January 9 – 11, Orlando Florida
Coming out of the pandemic, we rejoined the Trailways organization for 2023 as an Associate Partner. Trailways is a historic brand in United States ground travel dating back to the 1930’s.
Betterez works with Trailways members today such as Amador Trailways, supporting their South Tahoe Airporter product, as well as Fullington Trailways with an education solution, whereby staff and parents of a school can enter the Betterez portal and make reservations for students to travel to and from home during breaks.
At the conference we learned about Trailways enhancements to www.trailways.com This site is continuing to make it easier for individual passengers to find inter-city transportation and groups to charter buses via the Trailways carrier network.
We also participated in the famous “speed dating,” where associate partners have the opportunity to visit with each Trailways operator for about 5 minutes. We had the opportunity to discuss how the Betterez SaaS could help Trailways operators in the areas of online Casino line run tickets, education transport services, similar to our Fullington solution, as well as opportunities for our employee transport solution in the areas of “safety manifests” and employee ridership reporting.
American Bus Association (ABA) Marketplace, Detroit Michigan, February 3 – 5
ABA Marketplace has been the main conference Betterez has attended, this was our 7th one!
A true highlight for us this year was to be one of the sponsors of the Women in Buses (WIB) Council session. Betterez first got involved in Women in Buses contributing ideas and support to Driving Force, an initiative to help Operators improve their processes to attract, recruit and retain drivers. It has become a natural progression to become more involved in WIB as part of our company’s Diversity & Inclusion approach, as well as to do our part to elevate the role of women in the overall Bus industry. Fernanda Garcia, Betterez Marketing Manager, has become our point of contact for WIB efforts. Here is Fernanda Garcia with Kim Grzywacz, WIB Member and Member of the ABA Board of Directors, volunteering at the Marketplace Women in Buses Booth.
Also at Marketplace, this year’s Betterez User Group focused on demonstrating several of the new 2022 and early 2023 features that have come into our SaaS via multi-tenancy. The new feature demo was recorded and will be distributed to all Betterez customers. And while we all know that Operator time is in high demand at these industry conferences, several key customers as well as potential future partners were able to attend in person. Here is Betterez’ Mike Van Horn with customers John Meier, Badger Bus, Dennis Lyons, Dattco and Terry Kin of All Aboard America Holdings, Inc. Thanks everyone for attending!
Busworld North America, Detroit Michigan, February 4 – 8
Since 1971 Busworld has been organizing events for the bus and coach industry around the world. This was their first conference in North America, so we decided to check it out, especially it being collocated with Marketplace. It was exciting that when we entered the conference hall we saw two beautiful motorcoaches wrapped with Academy Bus and Yankee Line, two-storied Bus operators that Betterez has worked with.
Busworld organized valuable industry sessions in the areas of frictionless ticketing, multi-modality and more. We were also able to meet with Busworld leadership to understand more about Busworld Latin America. The event is planned for later this year in Buenos Aires Argentina, both parties were interested in Betterez and our “sister” company Recorrido participating on a panel discussion at the conference.
Were you among the attendees at these events? Let us in on your top picks for must-attend Bus & Coach industry conferences. We’re all ears!