West Hants Buses Future Tennis Stars with Help From Westover Nissan
29 November 2011
Prestigious local tennis club, West Hants, has a new minibus, supplied by Westover Nissan in Bournemouth. The bus will help transport the growing number of rising stars in the region to and from tennis tournaments across the UK.
The new Nissan Primastar is used seven days a week. It transports children around the local area from Monday to Friday, running shuttles from Talbot Heath School (which operates a tennis scholarship programme in association with the Lawn Tennis Association) to Bournemouth Gardens Tennis Centre. For 40 weekends of the year it travels to and from tournaments across the country, spending three weeks in Scotland and another three weeks in Birmingham each year.
“Transporting children is a great responsibility which we take very seriously, especially as many of these young players are living away from home,” says Peter Elviss, Club Chief Executive. “The welfare of the young people in our care is paramount and, as a result, our vehicle selection process is more straightforward than it might be in other organisations – everything’s focused around safety and reliability. We had the same make and model of minibus previously and it’s given us three years of good service so the decision to replace it with like-for-like was pretty straightforward. The new Primastar has the added bonus of allowing us to present an even more professional image to the rest of the tennis community.”
Around 300 children under the age of 16 play regularly on West Hants’ 21 tournament-standard courts. Of those, 15 play at the top LTA levels and are on full-time coaching programmes, meaning they take time out of school and train for a minimum of 12 hours each week.
Paul Gentle, Business Centre Manager at Westover Nissan adds: “The Primastar has proved itself to be a great vehicle for West Hants and we’re delighted that Peter has chosen to come back to us again for his second Nissan minibus. Buying locally means that West Hants can make use of our VIP business benefits, which include extended servicing hours, a dedicated technical team and complimentary courtesy vehicles. We understand that our customers need to keep their businesses moving – and, in this case, get the young players to their training and tournaments safely and on time – so we bend over backwards to make sure that happens.”
With space for nine there’s plenty of room for the young players, their bags and racquets in the Primastar, but a 2.0 litre diesel engine and six speed gearbox also means it’s comfortable on long motorway journeys. It comes with extras at no additional cost, meaning it stacks up well against the competition. Safety-wise it has ABS brakes and ESP skid control giving the driver excellent control; inside, it benefits from rear parking sensors, Bluetooth connectivity and cruise control. It also has sliding doors on both sides, allowing children to get in and out away from traffic.
Bournemouth Gardens – which has recently been awarded Full Beacon status by the LTA in recognition of the outstanding facilities it provides to the local community – has five outdoor and three indoor courts. Although publicly owned, the tennis centre draws on private-enterprise expertise and is managed on behalf of the local authority by the West Hants management team.
West Hants itself is one of just 19 high performance tennis centres across the UK, thanks to the quality of its facilities and coaching as well as an outstanding track record. The Club has 24 tennis coaches and around 3000 members.
For more information about Westover Nissan’s commercial vehicles call Paul Gentle, Business Centre Manager on 0800 999 2325.
Visit www.westhants.co.uk to find out more about The West Hants Club.
