Connections Adventures, Australian Pacific Touring’s adventure holidays brand, is creating a wireless hotspot on board its coaches, providing travellers on its Queensland and East Coast trips with access to the Internet.
Each coach is equipped with one laptop computer for travellers to use to check emails, surf the web and burn their photos to disk.  According to Australian Pacific Touring’s Product and Marketing Manager Janice Kurrle, it is becoming increasingly common for young people to travel with their own laptop.  Young travellers want to be online as they travel between destinations: to keep friends and family up to date and to post blogs about their experiences.

She said: “Our decision to create a wireless hot spot onboard the Connections coaches was in response to customer feedback. Travellers were telling us that on reaching their destination, often they weren’t heading straight out to explore. Instead they were becoming frustrated in a queue at the hostel to use the one or two slow computers to download photos and check emails.”

The move has impressed passengers, with Connections receiving customer feedback comments such as “Excellent..saves searching around places for hours looking for a decent internet cafe” and “very useful and efficient use of travel time. Good addition to coach service!!!”

The service is titled Internet On Board and is currently available on all Connections Adventures East Coast trips. Connections Adventures offer four East Coast tours with prices starting from £360 for a 6 day Tropical Suntanner tour from Whitsundays to Cairns.  Connections is limited by the telecommunication networks that provide Broadband coverage, which is not extensive in regional areas.  However, plans are in place to roll out Internet on Board on other routes as soon as it is possible.

Internet On Board was developed in conjunction with Global Gossip, operators of the largest network of communication centres for travellers in Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu & Fiji. Global Gossip provides the hardware, technology and 24 hour support for Internet on Board.

All passengers on Connections Adventures Queensland and East Coast trips receive a free GossipCard - Global Gossip’s rechargeable Internet and phone card, loaded with two hours of free usage. Additional time can be loaded onto the card which can be used at Global Gossip communication centres in Australia and New Zealand as well as on board the coaches.

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