Spring into action

September always heralds a period of madness in the sports travel business as it means we literally spring into action and it rarely pauses until after the Australian F1 Grand Prix in late summer.

September means footy finals and we have huge numbers for the AFL Grand Final packages and NRL Grand Final packages. There are a few late nights coming up with last minute bookings as fans realize their team is going to get there and as we assemble hundreds of travel packs with grand final tickets, hotels documents and various other goodies while organizing our Sportsnet functions and speakers.

As that one day in September (or early October) passed for both codes there is no time to take a breather as hard on the heels of footy is the Philip Island Moto GP event and the Bathurst V8 races. Both events have something challenging in common for a sports travel company. They are in the country; there is limited accommodation and huge demand. We had booked out most of our top flight accommodation in and around both events months ago. No matter how hard you want to please the fans, at this time of year you are either staying up in Melbourne and transferring down to the track or looking at dorm accommodation around Bathurst for the Mount Panorama races. That all said it never seems to distract the fans from the enjoying what they really came for the sights, sounds and smell of motor sports.

2009 Moto GP travel

You either like bikes or you don't, if you do like bikes then is it road bikes or dirt bikes, if it is road bikes you probably have a specific preference for a brand, a style, an era and so on. Bike people are pretty difficult to pin down. So for all my fellow bike fans out there this post is about travelling to the Moto GP. We send people to events all around the world on a request basis but in the case of Malaysia and Australia we organise the "full monty" an end to end package with; hotels, transfers, track access and a function ( Wayne Gardner at Phillip Island this year).

We do the Phillip Island bikes because it is in Australia, it is in our state and we love it. The Malaysian Moto GP we do because every year as we get more requests for this event than we do for Hungary or any of the big Spanish GP events.

The thing I think that makes the GP event so interesting for the traveller is that like the V8 Supercars you can get on a similar machine to the bikes you are following, you can ride the track at Phillip Island, buy the gear and have a real sense of the event or the race. With F1 and other events I dont get to feel so close to the actual event experience. You don't get to feel like Jesen Button on the street in your 2004 Celica but being on the open road on your Aprilla is another matter.

I am of course forgetting the fans you gotta love your Moto GP fan. The events have a sort of out door music festival buzz about them except that everyone is eyeing off everyone else's gear & bikes in the parking area.