00:00Hi, I'm Peter Duke, the boss of Duke Travel and the founder of the TT Village, I guess,
00:07where we're sitting today in the marquee where a few hundred guests are staying with us.
00:14We're in the travel business now. We're probably better known in our history as a video company.
00:21At one time, with millions of customers worldwide, we'll have bought our DVDs and VHS and even downloads.
00:29Nowadays, our main focus is the travel business, and the common thread throughout all of that, really, is the TT races.
00:37So we are here right now with a pop-up hotel of 200 cabins,
00:43and that's one of the several features that we try to add to the TT in our role as a travel operator for the TT races.
00:52Well, my father was quite successful, as some people may know, in racing, the multiple world champion and TT champion.
00:59I was asked many, many times over my life, too, why didn't you go racing?
01:03And I think my general answer is I could never be as good as he was, so I didn't.
01:09We offer coach tours around the course, and I think yesterday Peter Hickman was doing our host, and he does a few for us.
01:17And some of the riders, when they're available, will sit in the front of the coach and give people a pretty amazing insight into a trip round.
01:25We also have hospitality sites, which we sell at Milne Town, which is a very, very popular site, and we've got a new one at Bray Hill this year.
01:35That'll be for up to about 150 guests with full sort of hospitality and so forth.
01:40And then we have grandstands at Hillbury and at Braddon as well now, so a few operations going on.
01:49The common thread is customers.
01:51They're petrolheads, they're power sport fans, as we call it.
01:55You know, they like sport with engines and wheels.
01:58And the TT is one of the pinnacle events in that sort of mix of customers.
02:03So we've always had several hundred thousand, believe it or not, TT fans registered in our databases.
02:11So when DVDs sort of started sliding away as a must-have, if you like, our customers were always saying to us,
02:21we'd love to visit the TT, but we can't find accommodation.
02:25You know, it's so difficult to book.
02:27So it was a fairly natural progression, I think, to get into the travel business.
02:31We were the biggest single outlet for merchandise for quite a few years.
02:36So we do some of our own merchandise and we still sell the official merchandise.
02:40That is available here at the village and we have four or five other outlets around the island, including the sea terminal.
02:46We've always followed the media side of the TT very, very closely and been quite a big part of that.
02:54We introduced in the 1980s, I brought over the first camera crews to do video reports of complete races.
03:04So, yeah, we'll go back a long way on the media side.
03:08Nowadays, it's looked after by the government and Greenlight TV, our longtime partners.
03:12And now we're focused on still delivering, hopefully, what our customers want, which is visit the place in a decent set of facilities,
03:25not necessarily sleeping in a bus shelter, as I can remember people used to do when Mike Halewood came back many years ago.
03:31So we try to provide as good an experience as possible.
03:36We started 2019 with 100 cabins and that was quite a challenge, I must say, because everything's plumbed in and water and electric and all the rest of it.
03:44But we've developed it and it's probably at its peak now with 204 cabins on the site.
03:50There's still enough parking on site.
03:52All the bikes, as you can see, align it.
03:53We have about 150 motorbikes parked here at the moment, but they're all off the road and all on the site.
03:59Demand exceeds supply for the TT without question, and that's both for ferries, to some extent for flights, and also accommodation of all sorts.
04:08There are less than 2,000 registered hotel accommodation rooms, serviced accommodation rooms on the island.
04:16This little village here with 200 rooms adds 10% to that.
04:20So it gives you some idea.
04:21So you inevitably come back to where do 28,000 people sleep during the TT.
04:28So the island is pretty much on the limit as to what it can do with hotels, obviously.
04:34And we could sell a lot, lot more hotel space if we had availability, certainly for the peak weekend.
04:41There's only so much you can do because of shipping this sort of kit in and out.
04:46So glamping can expand.
04:49Sleeping in tents, generally bring your own tent or whatever.
04:52You can still have a very cheap TT if you want to bring your own tent and sleep in the field.
04:56But, you know, there is a limit in addition to how much the police can handle, how much the hospitals can handle, as well as, obviously, the inevitable ferries.
05:06You know, there aren't ferries.
05:08It's not like hiring a car.
05:09You can't go and just hire a ferry to add to capacity into the Isle of Man.
05:13You know, so it's on its limits probably at 50,000 visitors and government strategy is to try and improve the quality of what we deliver.
05:25And, yes, and to try and improve the revenues to the Isle of Man and the Isle of Man people from the TT.
05:31The international market for the TT is growing, no doubt, and the Internet has helped there, and the new TV coverage helps a bit as well.
05:41You know, when we first did the TV coverage on Eurosport in the 80s, I mean, there were 5,000-plus Germans came just having seen it on telly in Germany, you know, in German language.
05:52The impact of TV can be great, and our international guests, we have over 25% of all our guests, we bring about 2,600 people to the TT, and we look after them with accommodation.
06:05A good quarter of those, I would say, are American or North American, but we've got South Americans, quite a growing contingent of French.
06:14We've got a really good French partner in there doing some great stuff.
06:18Spanish market is growing, and Germany's still there.
06:22It's probably, it's not as big as it used to be, interestingly, but we maybe need a bit more telly in Germany.
06:28Yes, some of our international visitors, I've seen it on telly, and, of course, they, some of them don't have a clue, really, about the races.
06:35So, they've just seen spectacular images on our little island, and they don't know where the Isle of Man is.
06:41And so, we start by explaining how the race works, and it's a time trial, and it's not a race, and that there is limitation on travel, limitation on, and we slowly, but some of my staff will spend 20 minutes on the phone.
06:57And then, maybe a couple of days later, we'll hear back with the booking, you know, but, yeah, it's a lot of education required, but it's triggered by this sort of bucket list, the bucket list is, they see it on telly, it goes on the bucket list.
