º£½ÇÊÓƵ

A German coach company which already has a major presence in mainland Europe is eyeing the domestic market with its º£½ÇÊÓƵ launch this week.

FlixBus has today announced plans to run four new routes between the capital and Birmingham, Bristol, Guildford and Portsmouth.

The Munich-based company, which first started operations in 2013, said it would run around 200 trips a week and was hoping to add further º£½ÇÊÓƵ routes in the future.

FlixBus bills itself as Europe's biggest provider of intercity coach travel and pre-lockdown was offering 400,000 daily connections to 2,500 destinations across 32 countries.

Last year, it carried 62 million passengers and occupied a 90 per cent share of the long-distance bus market in its German heartland in the first four years of its existence.

The company, which also launched in the US in 2018, does not actually own any coaches or employ drivers.

Instead, it works with local operators to run services and take care of day-to-day business although its vehicles do carry FlixBus branding.

It is not a complete stranger to the º£½ÇÊÓƵ market as it already runs services between London and destinations such as Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris and had been planning to launch here before the pandemic brought everything to a halt.