Ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne is extending its reservations system opening hours to seven-day-a-week operation from Sunday as it gears up for the 2004 summer season.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Joint Shipping Services Advisory Committee (SSAC) in Renfrew this morning (Thursday, February 19), CalMac Managing Director Lawrie Sinclair said: "I am pleased to confirm that from this weekend we are extending the opening hours of our Reservations system to include Sundays. The Reservations system will now take calls from 0900 until 1900 on Sundays and this extension is being achieved by utilising our Lochmaddy and Uig offices to take the calls. Last year, almost six times as many calls were answered compared with 2002 and 98% of calls were answered within three rings. We will obviously be looking to maintain and enhance that high level of standard as we go forward again this year."

Mr Sinclair said he was speaking against the back-drop of one of the company's best tourist seasons for some time. "Last year was extremely successful for Caledonian MacBrayne, and it was also challenging in many ways. Our 2003 calendar year carryings show that we maintained our recent upward trends and figures. We carried 5.16 million passengers (an increase of 5.9%), and 1.03 million cars (an increase of 3.2%). The network statistics are the best for car carryings since the Kyle-Kyleakin service ended in October 1995. This is the first time since then that CalMac has broken the million car marker and the figures would obviously have been even better had it not been for our difficulties with the failure for three months of the linkspan at Dunoon."

Mr Sinclair confirmed that the loss of the Dunoon linkspan in 2003 cost the company 42,000 passengers, 25,000 cars, 1,900 commercial vehicles and 250 buses. As a result, CalMac suffered a loss in revenue which it is unlikely to recover.

CalMac has also confirmed that consultation has begun on the timetables for winter 2004-5 and summer 2005, the first time that two sets of timetables have been issued. Commercial Manager Bill Main said: "By consulting on the 18-month period we are offering a set of longer term arrangements which should appeal to all our customers, enabling them to book well in advance and have all the detail they require right through to October 2005. This will hopefully include fares and we would anticipate opening our Reservations system for the summer of 2005 in October of this year, much earlier than we have ever managed to do."

Mr Main also confirmed that 2004 has got off to a promising start with January traffic, buoyant as a result of some good weather, showing an increase on 2003. Meanwhile, CalMac staff throughout the network are reporting strong patterns of bookings for later in the year.

Copies of CalMac's new summer brochure for 2004 are available from offices throughout the network and the pocket-sized summer timetables which take effect from April 2 should be available within the next few weeks.