Horst Lossa has become thin-skinned, the one and a half years of struggle for existence in the pandemic have afflicted him.

And so the managing director of the bus company named after his family from Oberursel says: “I'm afraid of October.” Around 60 percent of the previous business has only just returned when a corona wave threatens to roll in again.

Lossa, who runs the company with his sister, has already sold two of the previous ten buses, and he has had to dismiss three drivers.

There are bookings for the remaining vehicles at least during the holiday season.

After that, however, the order books are pretty empty again.

Speculations about the effects of the new Delta variant apparently put off interested parties, even if, according to the study, coaches are not points of infection.

Inga Janović

Business editor for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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During the holidays, groups of children in particular go on excursions, Lossa also has regular assignments for the city of Frankfurt, here too he mainly drives the youngsters.

“You can't be too bad”, says the entrepreneur, who is now more often at the wheel himself.

Anyone waiting for the well-to-do senior groups, who were the main customers of the bus travel providers before the pandemic, must be patient.

The travel offer for them is already large again, even if, unlike in the past, it is limited to destinations in Germany or perhaps Austria and Italy.

By bus to Spain, hardly anyone wants that at the moment.

But there are also no one-day club trips.

“People don't dare to do it yet,” confirms Uwe Schott, operations manager at Sack GmbH in Friedrichsdorf.

For the time after the holidays, however, he has some bookings on the calendar.

The company's more than 60 vehicles were idle for weeks, and employees are still on short-time work.

"Every now and then we took the buses to Giessen so that there was no damage to the vehicle," says Schott.

The age of the owner also plays a role

The company run by Claudia and Gerd Jäger, which offers everything from bus travel to regular transport and school transport, was hit particularly hard by the airport standstill, like some of its competitors. Sack operates the regular service there for the employees, but the frequency has been greatly thinned out. After all, there have been visitor tours at the airport again since this month, for which Sack provides vehicles and drivers. The company has received state aid, but it lives mainly from the substance. "We would still be able to do this until spring, but by no means longer," says Operations Manager Schott.

By then, some businesses will be gone, fears Karl Reinhard Wissmüller, owner of a bus and travel company in Michelstadt and chairman of the state association of Hessian bus operators. Around 150 companies are organized there, and together they have around 3,000 buses and 6,000 employees. Some providers have already announced their end: The Italian Netinera group will close its subsidiary Sippel im Hofheim by the end of the year, the reasons given are the tough price war in the industry and the collapse of the tourism business. Sippel had around 70 vehicles and also operated a number of local transport lines. Wissmüller also knows of colleagues in the Odenwald who want to quit at the end of the year, in many cases the age of the owner plays a role in addition to the lockdowns.

"Every bit of uncertainty is poison"

Everyone in the industry has heard of colleagues who have sold buses to save themselves over time.

“At the moment you can only get rid of them for a third of the price,” says Uwe Schott.

This is only good business for the mostly Eastern European buyers.

The biggest problems would be companies that offer everything under one roof, i.e. liner services, travel and rentals.

Whole branches of business were idle for them, but the total minus was not big enough to get government aid.

“They won't last another winter,” says Wissmüller.

Nevertheless, the entrepreneur sees himself and the entire industry in the Kantian sense obliged to be confident, he can also muster it because he feels that people have a lot of catching up to do. The summer has got off to a good start for him, but after that it looks bad again, trips to trade fairs or even Christmas parties have not yet been in the book. Wissmüller, who is also a tour operator, is currently working on the offers for the year 2022 - and is planning it as if there would then be no more pandemic. “But every bit of uncertainty is poison for our business,” says the Odenwälder.