Music Touring Came to a Temporary Halt, But The Opportunity to Travel Like a Rockstar Hasn’t

By Quinn He

You’re at a concert. It ends and you and your friends make your way to the exit, a drop in the ocean of people that are getting herded towards the door.

As you finally make your way outside one of your friends catches your attention by pointing out the monolithic, glossy, jet black bus that quickly finesses its way onto the street and into the night to the next tour location.

Travel Buses for Rent With StormTrooper Coaches 

Before the pandemic, there’s a chance that the bus could be one of StormTrooper Coaches’ luxurious travel buses with your favorite A list artist partaking in post-concert revelries just through those blacked-out windows.

StormTrooper Coaches is a company out of Los Angeles that specializes in reliable, safe, and long-distance transportation for music artists in the United States and Canada.

Selling out stadiums isn’t a requirement for traveling in these spaceship-like buses. Every day people are lining up to split the cost of these lush buses.

Nick Benavides, the founder, and CEO of StormTrooper Coaches told GoNOMAD about a group of six men going on a super fun getaway with a StormTrooper bus at their disposal.

The extensive weekend trip will start in Newport Beach, CA and the travelers will make their way to Zion National Park, thanks to the experienced StormTrooper bus driver, where they’ll spend the day drenched in UV rays doing outdoor activities.

Off to Lake Tahoe

After the exploration of Zion, our crew will voyage to Lake Tahoe that evening and, again, be driven through the night by their kind driver.

The next, and final destination of this stint is in Pebble Beach, after two days in Zion, Utah. The six men will finish their trip with a 9:00 AM tee time. This whole trip will only cost the group only $10,700. Now you may think, “Only!?,” but these trips include some unforgettable experiences on a luxury tour bus.

Splitting the cost of trips like this helps to lessen the initial impact of the credit card bill.

The six men on their trip split $10,700 six ways, which totals to around $1,783.33, competing with the price of other fancier vacations.  Pretty, pretty good, in our view.

Untapped Market for Private Bus Travel

The company took off after founder Nick heard from his friends in the music business that many of the touring buses they’ve used did not suit their needs. Along with the fact that there weren’t many tour bus companies in California, Nick saw it as an opportunity in an untapped market.

After just a few years the company has gained a noticeable amount of traction with its fleet of 16 Prevost buses three years after starting and, two more years after that, they are up to 22 in the StormTroopers fleet.

Their fleet of buses is built to travel with all the amenities of home including a kitchen, bathroom, shower, and sleeping bunks. Nick Benavides equates it to, “first-class international flights where you have the fully reclining seats because you get your own little space and it’s super comfortable.”

A Worthwhile Way to Travel

Nick stressed travelers don’t necessarily need a plan for what they want out of a trip with

StormTrooper Coaches. “We can send them a couple of sample itineraries.” Past trips have also been mentioned to potential travelers looking for a trip on a StormTrooper bus.

The ease of planning a trip is an attractive aspect of riding with StormTrooper.

Nick explained the flexibility in setting up a getaway and how the company works with how many days a client has, where they want to go, where they want to stop, and what they want to see along the way.

With all this in mind, it’s easy to think renting or buying an RV would save you money, or would be easier, but you’d be mistaken. Nick compared the company’s role in the travel market by discussing the cons of renting an RV and driving yourself.

“It’s just taxing driving that much…They’re not going to get as far with a professional driver on the tour bus,” Nick said. And he’s right. With long driving shifts on an RV road trip, some members of the party could get drained and exhausted, preventing them from truly relaxing on what would supposedly be a peaceful vacation.

With StormTrooper, the professional drivers have the road under control while travelers can relax and enjoy their much-deserved vacation or weekend trip.

Lounge Space Too

Benavides added, “What you don’t get on a plane is the lounge space. There’s a back lounge space, a front lounge space, a bathroom, a kitchen.” When you’re traveling for weeks at a time, it’s important for buses to be outfitted with the most amenities possible to make trips for customers the most comfortable they can be.

Since the COVID pandemic began, the company has shifted over from being the main bus for Justin Bieber and Post Malone tours to doing private charters for people who don’t want to fly and want a luxury bus at their disposal.

Never Want to Travel Another Way Again

Nick Benavides explained how great it is to travel in one of the 22 buses in the StormTroopers fleet.

“It has all the amenities. You can watch TV, play video games, work on your computer because we have the internet. It’s pretty cool to travel that way,” he said.

Along with other basic amenities, the ability to do your work and play video games while traveling the country is hard to beat.

Even having a bathroom on a bus is enough to sell people, but Wi-Fi? Stay up to date on your current TV show binge even on vacation.

I mean look at this interior, how could, after traveling in a vehicle like this, you want to go back to renting RVs?

You may think these million-dollar buses call for a similar price tag to rent, especially if the likes of Post Malone are riding in them, but you’d be surprised.

Fallen on COVID Times

The pandemic has forced everyone to essentially cancel their summer vacation plans and either stay home or find somewhere else to safely vacation. Many are falling back to a tried and true outing, hitting the road on a road trip.

Now is no better a time than ever to hit the road, but if your budget is a little flexible, you may want to look into the private travel option StormTrooper provides.

Teleport Through Time

StormTrooper only allows their trained drivers to get behind the wheel of these colossal tour buses. This ensures the safety of passengers and the bus itself, but it also has another added benefit.

What the company refers to as “time travel,” is the idea that passengers can go to sleep during the night, while the driver is behind the wheel watching the road and taking them through the night.

“That’s the best way to do it,” Nick assured, “it’s all about however the client wants to do it. If they want to ride during day and check out what it’s [the bus] like on the road, they can do it.”

There’s no better experience than hopping in one of the luxury buses at night, going to sleep, and waking up 600 miles down the road.

Don’t worry, with a trained driver at the helm, there’s not a worry in the world.

Experienced Night Drivers

Nick phrased it, “Our drivers are used to going at night so you can spend a whole day and have dinner then get ready to do to bed, go to bed, and by the time you wake you’re 600 miles down the road. So we call that a teleport.

“You don’t have to deal with going to the airport and flying somewhere and then getting in a car and going to a hotel… It’s that door to door thing that makes it really cool.”

Especially for those going on tours across the country, the luxury of playing a set, getting on the bus, going to bed, and waking up at the next city is a huge reason many use buses instead of flying.