Law /
Business in Poland and Polish reality, How are you doing in Poland? [82]
Exactly there is another factor as you said such as very long summer holidays, in Poland kids have time off from late June till 1st of September!
Well, speaking from personal experience - one huge advantage of organising such trips as the director of the trip is that you can bring a child along. I've got the course as well, and it's pretty much a given that anyone working as a director of summer camps will take their own kids, though the teachers on such camps will do the actual caring. It should be possible with the right amount of effort to put together a programme for the bus in the summer months and keep it moving constantly.
My question here is - is that done so someone naive can take a job, sign a contract and lose money on it?
It's normal to try and lowball here, but don't fall for it. It's just the way they do business - you'll see the same nonsense with people offering ridiculously low rates that they can't possibly manage. I remember setting up one project for a webdesign a few years ago, and the lowest offer was easily 50% lower than I budgeted for. What made it amusing was that I structured the contract in such a way that they only got paid after each milestone, so when they realised halfway through that it was costing them a lot more than they expected, I still had a half finished project for a very low price. I think on the whole thing, I ended up paying around 30% less than expected, which wasn't bad for what it was.
For a two day bus trip with some small viatoll costs (not much, in the region of 30-40zł) for 400-500km, including overnight stay - I'm paying between 1600zł-2000zł brutto here in Poznań. That's normally leaving at 4-5am and returning at around 9-10pm the next night, with some small trips at the destination. The highest I've paid was 2400zł, but that was on the very high side and was a last minute thing.
so it's easy to calculate that they want to spend almost 0.98PLN per km
No chance. Fuel has gone down, but you can't bet on it staying at this price.
Try these links to get an idea of what others are charging.
sindbad.pl/artykul/wynajem-autokarow
madel.com.pl/index.php?page=cennik
linieautokarowe.pl/page_cennik_transport.html
It's probably worth pointing out that if it's for such a contract, they're looking for a company with an old wreck of a bus that will simply get kids from point A to point B - they won't be looking for something newer and in very good condition.
Do you know on how to sort out a school contract?
Usually these things are done by tender through the local gmina - look for (name of gmina) BIP on Google and you should find these things.
Essentially, I think you'd be best to move into operating the bus as part of a package. Get the nightclub runs sorted out - say Friday night to Kraków through Trzebinia/Krzeszkowice and Saturday night to Katowice through Oświęcim/Pszczyna/Tychy/Mikółow and do a deal with a good club so that they'll pay you something for bringing customers straight to them. Organise Saturday daytime trips for kids to Katowice/Kraków picking up in small towns along the way (get in touch with schools to promote it), and perhaps get involved with churches so that you can organise Sunday trips to important places of worship in the region. Trips to Jasna Góra should always work, for instance.
I would suggest that if school runs prove problematic, the best bet will be to bite the bullet and operate a passenger service. There's a lot of places that aren't very well connected in Poland - for instance, you could try operating a service from Chrzanów to that huge shopping centre in Gliwice (I've forgotten the name...) - it would be a straight run along the A4, so it shouldn't be too hard on the bus.
