logo
Bus fares kept below national cap, council says

Bus fares kept below national cap, council says

Yahoo21-04-2025

Bus fares will continue to be discounted from later this month, Brighton & Hove City Council has confirmed.
Short and medium length trips across the city will be capped below the national £3 single-journey price, which rose earlier this year.
Trevor Muten, cabinet member for transport, said the cap was "really good news for thousands of people who use the city's buses".
Prices for medium journeys will be subsidised from 28 April until autumn, the council said, while "short-hop" travel will remain at £1 until "at least the end of the year".
From 28 April, medium length journeys will drop from £2.80 to £2.50, the council said.
The type of trips covered by the fare include journeys from Seven Dials to George Street in Hove, or Palmeira Square to Brighton railway station in Queens Road.
Longer journeys will still be capped at the national £3 limit.
Student all-day fares will also be capped at a lower rate from the autumn, dropping to £4 from £4.40.
Added discounts will be paid for through additional funding from the Department for Transport, the council added.
Mr Muten said: "We've worked very hard with the city's bus operators to reduce the cost of medium length journeys, fares for students and extend the £1 short-hop fare offer until at least the end of the year.
"Making bus travel more affordable means we can connect residents and students with work, education and communities. It also makes bus travel more enticing, meaning people can make more sustainable travel choices.
"But this is just the start of an exciting 12 months with improvements to make bus journeys better for everyone."
Bus fares were previously capped at £2 per single journey but this was raised to £3 at the start of 2025.
Follow BBC Sussex on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.
Councils given funding for zero-emission buses
'Strangest' items left on buses in 2024
Brighton & Hove City Council
Brighton and Hove Buses

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

How to Acquire Customers with Instagram Ads in 2025
How to Acquire Customers with Instagram Ads in 2025

Business of Fashion

time24 minutes ago

  • Business of Fashion

How to Acquire Customers with Instagram Ads in 2025

Advertisers are starting to get a little more bang for their buck on Instagram. In the years after Apple made it harder to track iPhone users' online activities in 2021, the metrics on social marketing mostly headed in one direction: more expensive, less effective. But recently, the data has started looking better. The number of customers who click on Facebook and Instagram ads grew 14 percent year-over-year in the first five months of 2025, while the cost for each of those clicks dropped 10 percent during the same period, according to marketing agency Belardi Wong. There's no one reason online marketing has suddenly opened up again. In the last year, Meta added more AI tools through a platform called Advantage+, which it launched in 2022, that makes it easier for brands to target the right audiences with specific types of ads they're most likely to engage with. A study the company conducted last year found that brands using Advantage+ have seen a 22 percent higher return on ad spend on average, according to Jackie Pimentel, global lead of ads product marketing for Meta. (The company is reportedly planning to fully automate ad creation and targeting in 2026.) (BoF Team) As ads get cheaper, and more effective, it's creating an opening for a new generation of fashion start-ups. Many new brands have leaned towards building a following through their own social media content because paid ads were too expensive, especially when customers who click on them often fail to return. Now, performance marketing is a bigger part of the mix again. What those ads look like has changed since 2021, however. AI may enhance targeting capabilities, but consumers often recoil if the ad itself looks like it was generated by a machine. Potential customers still want to see great storytelling, whether it's glossy still images or pithy reels that show off a brand's personality. Womenswear brand Damson Madder, for example, 'takes a really bespoke approach to what creative we are servicing at every stage in [the] customer journey,' said Emma Shepherd, the brand's head of marketing. Damson Madder uses more polished campaigns to draw in new customers and product-specific imagery to retarget existing customers. Repurposed user-generated content helps fill in storytelling gaps. In two recent videos repackaged as ads, creators Polly Sayer and Poppy Almond show off different outfits they wore during Copenhagen Fashion Week, providing a deeper look at how specific pieces and looks can be styled for everything from café hopping to meetings. 'If you looked at Instagram a few years ago and just Meta ads in general, it used to be like, how do you figure out your targeting to make sure that you target the right audience,' said Emanuel Cinca, founder and chief executive of the Stacked Marketer newsletter. 'It's changed in the past year or so, where almost 80/20 percent of the performance is given by how good your creatives are.' Polished Campaigns A top-performing Instagram ad from With Nothing Underneath's summer 2025 campaign. (With Nothing Underneath) A still from Damson Madder's top-performing January 2025 campaign. (Damson Madder) A still from Set Active's spring 2025 "Coastal Countryside" campaign. (Set Active) When advertising on Instagram, the biggest challenge is getting people to notice an ad when they're quickly scrolling. Brands need to ensure their personality shines through so audiences can quickly get to know their brand identity and also remember them more easily. With these campaigns, consistency in aesthetic and tone of voice goes a long way. Women's shirting brand With Nothing Underneath produces all of its imagery in the brand's signature film camera style, which can have a soft, diffused look that appears more organic than digital photos. It also helps keep costs down; images from a summer 2025 campaign shoot in the South of France were used for both paid ads and posts on its page. One of those ads, which featured a photo of a woman sunning herself overlaid with with the quote 'To be worn effortlessly, without thought or anything underneath,' had 28 percent lower cost per acquisition than its average ad. 'When they get hit with an ad, it would be so weird for them to be hit with something that was not from the same shoot, with a different tone of voice and super corporate copy when they're used to our tone of voice,' said Pip Durell, With Nothing Underneath's founder. 'Our tone of voice is very British … It's a little tongue in cheek. It's not that serious.' Damson Madder uses campaign imagery that tells a story and leans into its playful, quirky style to draw new shoppers in. In January, for instance, it released one of its top-performing campaign carousel ads of 2025 featuring models faced with the slightly surreal chaos of returning to the office after the holiday season. 'Stuff that has some storytelling and intrigue, but is also really beautiful, slick, inspirational fashion campaign imagery and video … is what really draws customers in at the top of the funnel,' said Shepherd. User-Generated Content A UGC video posted during Copenhagen Fashion Week, which Damson Madder repurposed as an ad. (Damson Madder) One of Lisa Says Gah's UGC-style ads produced in-house. (Lisa Says Gah) A college ambassador video Set Active repurposed as an ad. (Set Active) Many brands have turned to repurposing user-generated content to create ads that feel less pushy. The original videos are mostly non-sponsored posts made by influencers walking viewers through a product's functionality or offering styling tips, although some brands are creating in-house versions starring team members. To grow that strategy, brands are getting more strategic about how they work with creators to re-use product content they post. Instead of overloading on gifting, as consumers get better at sniffing out inauthentic sponsored posts, brands are developing longer-lasting partnerships with creators who can choose to post about a product if they wish, and repurposing styling or educational videos that emphasise a product's utility. 'We've done that in the past … where 1,000 people would post the same thing on the same day,' said Vicky Boudreau, founder of micro-influencer platform Heylist. 'Now if you do a campaign asking everybody to post the same messaging within the same format, it looks super staged.' Set Active sees user-generated videos working 'because consumers can see how it moves, how it flows, how it fits into a daily life,' said Johnson, and the brand has recently scaled this content to make up 25 percent of its ads, up from 15 percent. The brand directly collects videos created by its community, and then requests usage rights. Some brands have even taken to producing content in-house that mimics what users might create. One of Lisa Says Gah's top five performing campaigns in the past year, for example, featured the brand's creative producer modelling the Jenny dress, and generated a $6 return — while its typical return on ad spend has been $5 for the year thus far. Product-Focused Imagery A Damson Madder ad highlighting some of its accessories. (Damson Madder) A Lisa Says Gah ad highlighting pieces from its summer collection. A Set Active video ad featuring pieces from the brand's core collection. (Set Active) Brands are learning when to push product-specific imagery — whether flat-lay product images or e-commerce product shots — which were once known to clog users' feeds but can be effective at converting shoppers who are already familiar with a brand. While Spanish womenswear brand Hand Over primarily focuses on campaigns and creator content, it uses product shots 'when we feel people need to just add it to the cart, maybe on Black Friday or a day after a drop,' said Lucia Mac Lean, the brand's creative lead. Product-focused visuals can be similarly effective in a video format. One of Set Active's top-performing ads is an 11-second video overlaid with the caption 'pov: your summer 2025 capsule wardrobe has arrived,' which showcases how a variety of pieces from their most recent collection can be styled. Whether a brand is producing polished campaigns, repurposing user content or drilling down to product-specific imagery, it needs to ensure its ads are reaching consumers at the right point in their shopping journey. New AI tools are helping brands quickly put an ad in front of a group of customers and see how they respond to it before pushing the ad out to a larger pool of users, said Cinca from Stacked Marketer. 'The biggest benefit is just the ease of testing,' he added. The tools are also helping brands reach larger audiences on Instagram, Meta's Pimentel said. 'Instead of like 100 people, where we look to see who among these 100 people are right for your ad, for your business? Who might convert? We actually can do that at a much larger scale,' she said. While many brands are still figuring out how much AI targeting they want to use, especially around tools that tailor the content of ads to specific customers, it's important to continue prioritising the quality of their content. 'It's reached a point where, really, the creatives are what matter the most,' said Cinca.

Hotel experts reveal UK spots with best 5-star stays (one is just £56 a night)
Hotel experts reveal UK spots with best 5-star stays (one is just £56 a night)

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Hotel experts reveal UK spots with best 5-star stays (one is just £56 a night)

When finding a place to stay in the UK or abroad, you want to make sure you are getting the best hotel you can. The UK is home to many top stays, and some of the more luxurious sites are more accessible than you think. Today, has released its 2025 Hotel Price Index to find the best value stays and the destinations "where the pound will go further". Here are the key findings, including where in the UK you can find some luxury stays. The Hotel Price Index by analyses global year-on-year average daily rates in the most popular international and domestic destinations and delves into the variation between star ratings. It compares average daily rates of three, four and five-star hotels from January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2024. It also compares year-over-year average daily rates from the same period compared to January 1 to December 31 in 2023, across the most popular international and domestic destinations for Brits. reveals the best UK spots for 5-star stays For the 2025 Hotel Price Index, has highlighted some of its key findings. It said that domestic prices remain more affordable, with hotel rates here averaging at £97 per night compared to a rise to £140 per night abroad. also revealed that five-star luxury hotels in the UK are 21% cheaper than abroad. Popular cities such as Manchester, Bath and Brighton boast some deals that are less than £200, it said. also advised those looking to stretch their wallets by going five-star to do it in the UK rather than abroad, with five-star rates averaging at £177 a night compared to £222 a night abroad. For travellers who want a five-star stay, close to home, you can find the best value in these UK destinations with stays under £200 a night: Swindon: £56 a night York: £170 a night Manchester: £171 a night Bath: £193 a night Newcastle: £195 a night Among the most popular cities for Brits booking five-star stays are Brighton, at £106 per night, Cardiff, at £150 per night, and London, which sits higher at £306 per night. The new Hotel Price Index also revealed some of the UK's "four-star sweet spots". analysis showed that four-star hotels offer the best value for travellers looking to upgrade their stays abroad. Manchester was one of the best value five-star hotel spots (Image: Getty Images) It said the average daily rate is just 41% higher than three-star properties. Meanwhile, five-star hotels cost, on average, 63% more than four-star hotels, with domestic hotels seeing roughly the same increases. says the best value for domestic four-star stays includes Aberdeen, Derby and Milton Keynes, all of which have rates under the four-star average of £110 a night. Best international hotels for 5-star stays new index reveals that some international destinations, including Orlando (-7%) and Las Vegas (-4%) saw declines in hotel prices. Meanwhile, high-demand destinations like Tokyo (+15%), Seville (+13%) and Madrid (+13%) experienced an increase. It said that for travellers looking for more affordable trending destinations that are growing in popularity should try Bangkok, Thailand (average daily rate of £77 a night) and Kraków, Poland (average daily rate of £90 a night). said the following international cities not only have five-star hotels under £200 but have seen a jump in popularity over the past year: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: £108 a night Bangkok. Thailand: £123 a night Prague, Czech Republic: £136 a night Istanbul, Turkey: £137 a night Doha, Qatar: £173 a night It added that destinations like Bangkok and Istanbul "offer five-star stays at almost three-star prices, redefining the meaning of affordable indulgence". Recommended reading: Looking to explore Britain by rail? Here are the best hotels near train stations European destination with cheap meals is best value holiday for Brits, report says Vrbo reveals UK's best holiday homes in 2025 for an 'unforgettable' staycation Melanie Fish, travel expert at said: 'For price-conscious travellers in today's economy, the Hotel Price Index offers a rare, data-driven lens into where your money goes furthest. "It's like a travel cheat sheet — revealing where to splurge, where to save, and where luxury quietly costs less. 'Cities like Bangkok, Budapest and Bristol stand out for offering top-rated stays across all star levels, proving that great travel doesn't have to come with a high price tag."

Iris Ventures Leads Multimillion-dollar Investment Into Fast-growing Wellness Platform Healf
Iris Ventures Leads Multimillion-dollar Investment Into Fast-growing Wellness Platform Healf

Yahoo

time3 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Iris Ventures Leads Multimillion-dollar Investment Into Fast-growing Wellness Platform Healf

— Healf, a leading online retailer selling premium wellness products, has closed a multimillion-dollar funding round led by Iris Ventures, an international growth equity firm specializing in next-generation lifestyle and health-focused brands. Launched four years ago by brothers Lestat McCree and Max Clarke, Healf has become one of the U.K.'s fastest-growing well-being companies. It has built a reputation for its polished curation, clear communication and a personalized approach to well-being. More from WWD The Top Five Health and Wellness Trends in 2025, According to The Vitamin Shoppe Farfetch Pushes Into South Korea, One of the World's Biggest Luxury Markets EXCLUSIVE: Beekman 1802 Founders Release Book 'G.O.A.T. Wisdom: How to Build a Truly Great Business' The company has been able to scale quickly in what remains a fragmented market in the U.K., populated by pharmacies and retail chains that are often cluttered with product — and the opposite of aspirational. Healf has a growing community of 325,000 customers and 282,000 followers on Instagram, and is on track to post $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025. The plan is to expand Healf across Europe and capitalize on the booming wellness trend. The personal health and well-being category alone is estimated to be worth $1.8 trillion globally. Healf's approach is to help people take control of their health with a holistic approach that's focused on the basics: eating, moving, sleeping and mindfulness. The site stocks more than 4,000 curated products to tend to those needs, and helps customers personalize their approach. Healf is also packed with slick editorial images and articles on how to lower cortisol levels naturally; special massages for lymphatic health; and how to bring 'more brain-soothing beauty into your life.' Customers take surveys to help them target the best remedies, and there is also an AI assistant that doles out recommendations about gut health, sleep habits and how to manage stress and anxiety. McCree said he and Clarke started the company because 'well-being shouldn't feel overwhelming — but it so often does. From Day One, Healf has been dedicated to cutting through the noise with simplicity, credibility and curation.' He added that the company's trademarked Four Pillars strategy focused on eating, moving, sleeping and mindfulness acts as a compass, and helps the founders deliver on quality, service and product offerings. Clarke said he and his brother were inspired by their own well-being journeys and have experienced the 'tangible and synergistic benefits that accompany a holistic approach to well-being — a major unlock we believe all consumers deserve access to.' Florian Wojewodzki, partner at Iris Ventures, said 'we quickly understood that Max and Lestat were a rare breed of founders. They are mission-driven brothers exemplifying laser focus and militant execution at every turn. 'Their uncompromising pursuit of product, innovation and customer journey excellence has been a masterclass, and propelled Healf to the forefront of health and wellness disruption. The company's highly engaged and growing community is a testament to its standout offering and the consumer trust it has so deservedly earned,' Wojewodzki said. Montse Suarez, founder and managing partner of Iris Ventures, said that 'with smart retail curation, personalized tech, and habit-forming products, wellness is no longer an add-on — it's seamlessly woven into everyday life. We're seeing a powerful shift from reactive fixes to proactive strategies. 'Max and Lestat recognized this early on and, with unwavering focus on excellence, have rapidly built an exceptional business. We're proud to partner with them and to help shape the future of well-being together,' she said. Iris Ventures is a thematic fund targeting European, U.K. and U.S. high-growth customer-centric brands and tech-enabled solutions across consumer sectors including beauty, health, wellness, family, lifestyle, nutrition, daily tech and modern commerce. Recent investments have included Maurten, a global sports nutrition company based in Sweden; Biomel, a plant-based gut health brand; and Superlativa, a drug- and hormone-free supplement that aims to help manage stress and regulate women's levels of cortisol. Best of WWD Harvey Nichols Sees Sales Dip, Losses Widen in Year Marred by Closures Nike Logs $1.3 Billion Profit, But Supply Chain Issues Persist Zegna Shares Start Trading on New York Stock Exchange Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store