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This interview with Pawan Bahadoer (PB), employee of bus rental and coach hire company Van Heugten Tours, is taken by NHTV student Veerle Valentijn (VV). This interview is taken on 1 June 2016, at the location of Van Heugten Tours BV, Den Haag.
PB: Yes, I always was interested in busses. I want to drive with the busses eventually. I worked in a garage for a couple years, after that I came here. My goal is to drive with busses.
Pawan in front of a Van Hool bus. This is a wheelchair bus elevator . The bus has 51 seats, a bar, good chairs, air-conditioning, a toilet and a TV.
PB: I came here in December 2015/January 2016. I was 17 years old, I am 18 years old now.
PB: No, not in the coach hire sector but yes a bit related: I worked in a garage, Hornbach (building market) and Jumbo. I didn’t like this things eventually. That’s why I came to this company.
PB: Yes, I will. The company started in 2009. Tim and Marcel van Heugten started it. They started with renting out one bus. Now there are already 10 busses.
PB: The owners and bosses are still Tim and Marcel van Heugten.
PB: There is one other family member in the company. That’s a cousin of the owners.
PB: We have 12/14 regular drivers. We have one part-timer. We also have mup employees. This are employees with a 0 hours contract.
PB: The first vehicle was an Iveco cross way. This bus have 50 seats. The second and third vehicles were a Van Hool EOS. These busses have 50 seats too.
PB: We have 10 busses. All of our busses have Wi-Fi. Some busses do have an elevator for people in a wheelchair. We get a new bus in October.
PB: Yes, we like 2 different brands. That are the busses of Mercedes and Van Hool. We like this busses because of the good price and the good quality.
PB: We focus mainly on the business customers. We serve school trips sometimes.
PB: We are focussing on the bigger business groups, but it depends on the company that hire us. There are smaller groups sometime. It varies.
PB: That depends on the groups. Some groups wants to go to a congress. Other groups likes to go to a theme park we serve both leisure and business bus rental clients
PB: We almost serve Dutch customers only. We serve international sometimes. There are more international customers in the summer months. We want to have more international customers. That’s why we have an English website.
PB: Yes. Our bus drivers are very decent. They are wearing suits. They are not allowed to wear jeans and a T-Shirt. They must have a good appearance. Service is the most important thing in our company. The customers are the most important!
VV: Is the company on social media?
PB: Yes we are. We have different social media accounts. Google is an important source for us too. We are using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.
You can see the accounts on these links:
RentAutobus: http://www.rentautobus.com/en/coach-minibus-companies/netherlands/van-heugten-tours/item3336
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VanHeugtenTours
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VanHeugtenTours or @VanHeugtenTours
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuu3nQ3P0J7FkZMoh-ui0g
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+TouringcarbedrijfVanHeugtenToursDenHaag/videos
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanheugtentours/ or @vanheugtentours
The Dutch website: http://www.vanheugtentours.nl/home
The English website: http://www.vanheugtentours.nl/en/
PB: We promise a clean bus, with a nice and decent bus driver. The driver is giving you a nice and safe feeling. We have Wi-Fi in all busses.
PB: We are not concerned about the competition. We are focussing on our own quality of busses and company. We do like to work with De Roo, Naaldwijk and Nooteboom Tours, Gouda.
