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Busbud Selected as Emerging Company for C2-MTL by Bronfman Foundation

7 May

Busbud is pleased to announce that it has been selected to participate in the Emerging Entrepreneur program at the C2-MTL conference to be held May 21-23 in our hometown of Montreal, Quebec.

The 2013 edition of C2-MTL will feature amazing speakers like Richard Branson (Virgin Group), Barry Diller (IAC), Philip Starck (architect and designer), Bobbi Brown (Bobbi Brown Cosmetics), Tom Mycoskie (TOMS shoes) and many more.

The Emerging Entrepreneur contest is run by the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation to offer 25 Montreal-based startup entrepreneurs the opportunity to attend the conference. The value of the prize includes a ticket to the conference (3600$), special programming and access to 1,000+ high-level executives from innovative companies around the world.

Other Montreal-based startups which participated in the program last year include Beyond the Rack, Wavo, Wajam, Frank & Oak and Lufa Farms.

For more information, view the press release. See you soon at C2-MTL!

C2-MTL

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Busbud Selected for Canada’s CTA @ NYC Program!

28 Feb
New York Road Sign

Next stop: New York City!

Busbud is pleased to announce that it has been selected to participate in the Government of Canada’s CTA@NYC program in New York City, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Canada in New York.

The Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) Initiative aims to provide digital media entrepreneurs with access to unique resources and contacts to accelerate the growth of their start-up on a global scale.

As part of the program, Busbud CEO LP Maurice will be working from General Assembly, a startup community space in the heart of New York City, from March to June 2013.

Other participants include: Authintic (Toronto), Elevate (Toronto), Picatic (Saskatoon/Toronto), Shiny Ads (Toronto) and Viafoura (Toronto). Previously, the last companies from Quebec to participate in the program were e-commerce clothes retailer Frank & Oak and location-based marketing startup SweetIQ.

Busbud is very excited to participate in this program. In addition to being the most vibrant travel hub in the world, New York City is increasingly taking center-stage as a hot-bed for internet-based technology entrepreneurship.

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Busbud Launches iPhone App

31 Jan

Busbud iPhone app

Today, we are very pleased to announce the launch of our new iPhone app aimed at giving travellers easy access to intercity bus travel information on the go.

Available for free for iPhone and iPad users, Busbud is your ideal bus travel companion, gathering together intercity bus schedules for 4000+ cities in 60+ countries.

At Busbud, we are uniquely focused on the problem of intercity bus travel, especially making the process of finding a bus schedule and buying a ticket as easy as possible.

With the launch of our mobile app, travellers can now:

  • Instantly access bus schedules on the go.
  • Sort by the best price, shortest duration and departure time.
  • View schedules in 10 languages and see prices in 15 currencies.
  • Auto-detect their current city and easily view top destination suggestions for that city.

Search

Search

Results

Results

In the example above, if a traveller searches for buses from Montreal to Toronto around noon, the Busbud app will display the next departure (13:00) closest to the current time for each company. This gives travellers a helpful at-a-glance comparison of multiple options, allowing them to find the right bus for their trip faster.

Get it from the iTunes app store here.

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Busbud Joins Smart Move Campaign!

25 Jan

Smart Move Campaign

Busbud is happy to announce that we will be joining as a partner Smart Move, a global industry awareness campaign to double the use of buses and coaches and achieve sustainable mobility for all.

Since its launch in 2011, Busbud has been committed to promoting bus travel to its audience of travellers around the world, notably by making it easier than ever before to search and book bus travel online.

The Smart Move campaign is a joint effort by the IRU and Busworld and is endorsed by 85 committed partners around the world. Smart Move’s mission is to promote the bus as a safe, environmentally-friendly, affordable, user-friendly and efficient means of collective passenger transport.

Buses and coaches offer an optimal solution to a range of current mobility challenges facing modern societies, including climate change, road safety, connectivity, social inclusion and congestion, to name but a few.

Smart Move Bus Shot

Source: Smart Move

Smart Move also aims to raise political and media awareness that the sustainable mobility solutions we seek are at our fingertips, simply by doubling the use of bus and coach transport worldwide. In Europe alone, such an increase would have the following impact:

  • A reduction in CO2 emissions by at least 50 million tonnes per year;
  • A reduction in fatalities on roads and streets, by more than 3000 per year;  
  • A significant reduction of congestions in cities at zero cost for taxpayers, as a result of the expected 10-15% reduction in car traffic;
  • The creation of 4 million new jobs.

In fact, buses and coaches are clear environmental champions compared to other modes of mass transport (especially car and air)! The following graph shows the level of CO2 emissions for various modes of transport per passenger/kilometer.

Co2 Emissions Chart

Source: World Tourism Organisation (WTO)’s Conference on environmentally friendly travelling in Europe, 2006 via Smart Move

At Busbud, we think that Smart Move’s mission is so important and so closely interwoven with our values that we simply had to partner up together to help spread the message!

We look forward to working with Smart Move in the future to keep promoting bus and coach travel worldwide as an affordable, efficient and eco-friendly travel option.

To learn about Smart Move, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube today!

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Busbud Launches Improved Route Pages

24 Jan

Improved-Route-Page

Today, we are launching a series of improvements for our popular Route pages that will make finding the right bus even easier.

After recently revamping our site design and launching a new promo page for our partnership with Orleans Express, we’re proud to finally bring these improvements to the entire website.

So what’s been improved? We have restructured the way bus schedules are accessed to make finding relevant information easier:

  • Results are now specific to the timeframe you wish to travel in and can be sorted by date, duration and price.
  • Passenger counts are now taken into consideration, making price comparisons a lot faster.
  • On select routes where additional data is available, we’re also including student and return trip pricing.

With these changes, travellers gain access to a lot more data than was previously available and better exposure to time-sensitive results, such as seasonal schedules and promotions, which we are working hard on expanding our coverage of.

Check out an example of the improved route page for Buenos Aires to Cordoba here!

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Busbud Turns One, Launches Revamped Site!

6 Nov

Search box on the newly redesigned Busbud.com homepage

Today, Busbud is proudly announcing the launch of its freshly redesigned website just in time for its one-year anniversary. Busbud.com’s new user-friendly design makes it even easier for bus travellers from around the world to find all the information they need to make the best travel decision possible. That means less time spent planning logistics, and more time enjoying the journey.

When I backpacked through South America in early 2011, it was very challenging to find accurate, trusted sources for bus travel information. That’s where the idea for Busbud came from. We’ve come a long way since then. We’ve worked really hard this past year and I’m proud to say that we now offer intercity bus schedules for 4379 cities in 66 countries. Our growing team is now tackling many interesting new challenges.

We all know that there is more to bus travel than schedules. And we are now ready to work on the next steps. We’ve been exploring partnerships with major bus compagnies to develop innovative systems that will contribute to an even more positive customer experience. Of course, technology is a big part of the solution, and we’ve been hard at work developing the leading technology that will make this happen.

Stay tuned for more exciting features and Busbud announcements in the weeks and months ahead!…

The Busbud community is growing fast. Thanks to everyone who has joined, provided feedback and helped to spread the word!

Trip Planning Made Easier with our Improved “Explore” City Guides

15 Feb

Aerial View of New York City

Busbud not only helps travelers around the world find bus schedules for thousands of routes, but also helps them find resources to better plan their trip with the Explore section available on our 4000+ city and country pages.

Today, we are launching improved Explore city guides, with new categories and more relevant content links than before. This update will help travelers find helpful content faster and make the travel planning process that much simpler! Check out the New York City page for an example.

The content links will feature a variety of sources relevant to the budget traveler, such as Lonely Planet, National Geographic, Rough Guides, Hostelworld and the STA Travel. We do our best to locate the best content from trusted providers, in order to save time for the traveler on-the-go. We will also be adding and curating content links on an ongoing basis to ensure their relevancy.

When we added the Explore section back in December, the section displayed links to great articles from the travel blogger community. These articles, which contain a wealth of city-specific travel tips, helped travelers discover local experiences, attractions and activities on their bus travel itinerary or in their destination city upon arrival. After receiving very positive feedback for the Explore section, we’ve decided to add new content categories and expand the number of content links displayed per category.

Travelers will now be able to find content links for the following additional new categories:

  • Online guides
  • Guidebooks
  • Accommodations
  • Tours and activities
  • Travel agencies
  • Tourism board
  • Local transport

So now, if your bus travel brings you to New York, you’ll be able to find a selection of guidebooks for the best travel publishers, research a city’s main neighbourhoods with helpful online guides, find a room in a hostel, book a city tour or learn about local transport options in New York – all in one place! You can also view the city pages for Toronto, Paris, Seville, La Paz, and Istanbul.

The Explore city guide for New York City

If you are a travel blogger and would like to have your blog posts featured in the Explore section, please contact us at community@busbud.com. You can learn how to submit article in our initial post for the Explore section. If you would like to suggest links to include or have your content featured in other categories, please contact us at info@busbud.com.

Photo: CJ ISherwood

Now Available in 10 Languages!

8 Feb

Since we launched the site back in November, Busbud has been available in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Today, in the spirit of making Busbud a valuable resource for travelers around the world, we are expanding our language support to 10 languages including the following 6 languages: German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish and Swedish.

We now also support 15 currencies. Until now, Busbud displayed bus prices in the national currency of the bus company offering service on a given route. Starting today, we will display bus prices both in the national currency and in the traveler’s chosen currency. This can be very practical for the user to quickly understand the price of a bus trip in a familiar currency. Travelers can use the new international menu at the top right of the site to set their preference.

We hope that these two changes will increase the accessibility of the site for international travelers, as well as help visitors to have a more relevant and personalized experience on Busbud.

Furthermore, we are also activating a number of international domains, such as those for Germany, France, Spain, Argentina and Brazil, that automatically set a relevant language and currency, which can later be changed by the user if desired.

Please check out the new changes and tell us what you think! If you have product suggestions or feedback on the translations, please email us directly at info@busbud.com

Navigate Yourself to your Next Bus with our City and Country Pages

19 Dec

The spectacular Iguazu Falls on the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay

Not sure where to go next? That’s OK, there are many possible options to travel around a country. Busbud can help you plan the next step in your travels by viewing popular connecting bus routes at a glance.

For example, earlier this year I traveled to Brazil to see the world famous Rio Carnival. Once the festivities we’re over, I wanted to travel around Brazil for a few more weeks, but wasn’t sure which direction I should head in. Should I follow the coast south to Sao Paolo, Florianopolis and Porto Alegre, or should I head north towards Salvador and Fortaleza? Or perhaps take a different route altogether and head inland to visit the beautiful Iguazu Falls in Foz de Iguazu? In any case, how much would these options cost? Were frequent bus departures available to each destination? How long would the trip be?

Our country page for Brazil shows you an alphabetical index to the more than 1,000 cities in Brazil we serve bus information for. We’ve been busy making a few improvements to our country pages based on your feedback over the last weeks in order to make them even more useful for you. Now you can see the top cities for each country ranked by departure frequency.

Country page for Brazil

On our city page for Rio de Janeiro, you can find route connections for follow-on travel. You’ll see popular tourist cities like Sao Paolo (6.5 hours away) and Paraty (4.5 hours away), but also frequently-running closer cities, like Cabo Frio and Araruama (2-2.5 hours away). You can also toggle between inbound and outbound connections using the To/From links above the table. Once you find a destination that makes sense for you, you can then click on to the Route page to see the bus operators offering service on this route.

City page for Rio de Janeiro

Of course, we’ve made links to these pages very present around the site. For example, you can go directly to a City or Country page by clicking the links in a page title.

Route page title for Rio from Janeiro to Sao Paolo

In my case, I ended up heading inland towards the awe-inspiring Iguazu Falls, even though it was relatively far from Rio!

We will keep working to make these pages even more useful for you, both for pre-trip planning and for on-the-ground use during your trip. If you have any suggestions, please let us know at info@busbud.com or via the Feedback tab on the bottom of every page of the site.

Photo by: Bruno Ideriha

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Find Cool Things to Do in Cities with our New Explore Section

11 Dec

The colourful neighborhood of La Boca in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Today we are introducing our Explore section, which will allow you to easily discover interesting content from the travel blogger community as you plan your bus travel. The Explore section can be found on Busbud’s city pages and will present a selection of links to blog articles relevant to that city.

Planning a trip to Buenos Aires? Or are you currently there? Now you can check our Buenos Aires city page to find useful information for your travels. You’ll find the usual list of inbound and outbound routes to popular follow-on destinations like Rosario, Mar del Plata and Cordoba, which can help you plan your next steps by bus travel. You’ll also now find the Explore section, with links to help you find free and must-do attractions in Buenos Aires, as well as local food suggestions, bicycle rental reviews and even a graffiti art tour. We also present links to the author’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, should you want to continue the conversation.

The Explore section for the Buenos Aires city page

Independent travel is all about exploring new places. Through our conversations with nomads over the past few weeks, we’ve really seen that there is a wealth of great content available to help travelers explore places, find things to do and learn more about cities. Blog posts give detailed first-hand accounts chock full of helpful hints and tips, and often focus on lesser known off-the-beaten path attractions. Busbud is a community built by travelers for travelers, so we are happy to feature and link to the best posts we can find for cities around the world.

Happy reading!

If you are a travel blogger and would like to have your blog posts featured in the Explore section, please contact us directly at community@busbud.com. Please send us the following:

About you:

  • Author Name
  • Blog Title
  • Blog URL
  • Twitter Feed URL (optional)
  • Facebook Feed URL (optional)

For each article:

  • City
  • Country
  • Article Title
  • Article URL
  • Article Date

Photo by: Tim Snell

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