FlixBus UK boss Andreas Schorling reflects on his company’s entry into the UK market, the exciting potential of AI and attracting new customers
Andreas Schorling: ‘We are able to attract a new demographic’
Since launching in the UK in 2021, express coach operator FlixBus has served over five million passengers. This summer, the global company doubled its UK network, with over 200 bright green coaches serving 80 destinations.
FlixBus UK’s senior managing director, Andreas Schorling, believes the company is now well on its way to achieving its goal of building the UK’s largest intercity coach network. But when FlixBus first came on the scene, he recalls that its ambitious growth plans were met with scepticism.
Schorling had a background that included start-ups Lime and Gett before he joined FlixBus UK as managing director in 2019, and he believes that working for disrupters rather than traditional transport companies positioned him for the challenge ahead.
Speaking to Leon Daniels for the Lunch with Leon podcast, which is produced in association with Passenger Transport, he said:
“It probably was good that I didn’t have extensive experience in the industry because anyone I spoke to within the industry said, ‘You’re absolutely mad. There is no way you can compete with National Express. They’ve been here for 5,200 years. They dominate. They’re aggressive. They will not allow you to survive.’”
Schorling was not deterred. “For me, it was just additional motivation,” he recalls. “I’m not going to kind of give up on the opportunity of dislodging what has essentially been a monopoly for many decades.”
Schorling found that he had much in common with his host, Leon Daniels, including a fervent belief that we should strive for “work-life harmony” rather than balance. The pair also share a passion for the potential of AI.
“We’re living in some of the most exciting times that have been for decades,” said Schorling. “I’m seeing people doing the most amazing things … There’s a company, a Swedish company, called Lovable, which is now doing $100m ARR – annual recurring revenues – after eight months since they launched, and they just allow people to create products, software, products, without coding. It’s absolutely insane. We have some people in our team now that have no software background whatsoever, and they are developing products that we can use in production that look like you have a professional team behind it. With no software experience, they learned it over two to three days, and it took them a week to create it.
The polite people were laughing behind our back, and the more blunt people were laughing in our face
“And that has only been for a year or two years, perhaps, imagine in five to 10 years, it’s going to be such an explosion of new things that we will be able to do.”
Schorling urges a positive mindset: “There will be some jobs that will disappear, but there will be a lot of new jobs that are being created. And I would rather think of what I can do in the future, rather than what I am going to lose out on due to the new things coming.”
As a new brand that communicates with existing and potential customers on other channels, Schorling believes that FlixBus can grow the market for coach travel. “We are able to attract a new demographic … who had never tried coach,” he told Daniels. “We can bring them onto coach and often when they try it, they say, ‘you know what, this was pretty good’, and they are then happy to return.”
He added: “I think if you’re a legacy player or incumbent, you get comfortable with the status quo because that works well for you, and you’re not necessarily concerned about how you could double or triple the market size, and what could you do to actually really grow and improve the perception of the product as such.”
Reflecting on the progress that FlixBus has made in the UK, Schorling said: “We are not done in any way or shape or form … It has been very clear from the very first day when we launched here in the UK, that we are here to build the largest inter city coach network. And I remember saying this in the very first interview when we were launching. I’m sure you can imagine the reactions that we received then … The polite people were laughing behind our back, and the more blunt people were laughing in our face. But for us, it’s been super clear, because we’ve seen the opportunity. We know what we are capable of, and we see the competitive space.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW: leondaniels.co.uk/podcast
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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