Meet the team
Richard Tyldsley | General Manager
Richard began his career as a bus driver in County Durham for Go North East. He later joined another company as an assistant operations manager, and was promoted to operations manager in 2010. Richard joined Go South Coast as General Manager for Bluestar, Unilink and Southern Vectis in October 2016.
Chrysie Papanicolaou | Operations Manager
Chrys has a wealth of experience in the bus industry, starting with Solent Blue Line in 1989. From a driver to revenue inspector to training and admin support roles, there's very little Chrys doesn't know about the business. She was promoted to Assistant Operations Manager in 2012, where she looked after our drivers at our Southampton depot before being promoted to Operations Manager in 2024.
Igor Svecovs | Assistant Operations Manager
Igor has been in the bus industry for more than 10 years, working his way through the ranks from the start. He was promoted after two years as a driver and has gained experience as a supervisor and forward allocator before he was promoted to Assistant Operations Manager and now looks after our Totton depot.
Gerrard Consalvey | Assistant Operations Manager
Before Gerrard began his career in the bus industry, he spent 19 years in the military which gave him many transferable skills that help him excel in his current role. He started with us in February 2023 after First Bus pulled out of Southampton. Whilst working for First, he progressed quickly from driver to supervisor, to performance supervisor within a short space of time, before securing his role here at Bluestar as an Assistant Operations Manager.
Anne-Marie Andre | Assistant Operations Manager
Anne has had her bus licence since 1998 and trained with Metrobus. She moved to the company in 2010 where she was a driver for Bluestar for 2 years and transferred to Unilink for a year before becoming a supervisor. She held this position for almost 11 years and became an Assistant Operations Manager in 2024 where she now manages our team of supervisors and looks after drivers across our depots.
Steve Whitehead | Unilink Manager
Steve has been in the industry since the beginning of his working life, from cleaning buses at the age of 14, to getting his bus license at 18, allowing him to move forward in his career. He did, at one point, take a small break from the buses but missed it so much that he had to return! Prior to this role, he worked at Whippet in Cambridge, and joined us here at Bluestar & Unilink in February 2024 as the Unilink manager.
Marc West | Commercial Planning Manager
Marc joined Bluestar and our sister company Southern Vectis in 2012, and has 30 years experience of working in a commercial office. Marc plans the Bluestar, Southern Vectis, morebus & Salisbury Reds bus networks, as well as ensuring our services remain reliable. Marc also looks after the timetable data on our website, Real Time Passenger Information & Next Stop Announcement systems.
Adam Ashford | Commercial Assistant Manager
Adam has 12 years experience working in the commercial bus industry having joined Yellow Buses of Bournemouth as an apprentice within the commercial team in 2013. He moved to Bluestar's sister company Morebus in Poole in 2016 taking responsibility for scheduling Bournemouth, Poole and Swanage depots. He was then promoted to his current role as Commercial Assistant Manager where he has responsibility for planning and scheduling activities across, Bluestar, Unilink and Morebus.
Alfie Cork-Simpson | Bluestar Commercial Officer
Alfie joined Bluestar in 2014. He is responsible for the scheduling of our 210 buses and 550 drivers. Monitoring timetable reliability and working on tweaks to our network to improve punctuality and better serve our customers is also an important part of Alfie's role.
Nikki Honer | Head of Marketing
Nikki has approximately 30 years bus industry knowledge and focuses on staying one step ahead in a commercial environment to exceed customer’s expectations, and is committed to understanding customer needs, to improving our business offering, and increasing our customer satisfaction ratings.
Her aim is to create eye-catching and fun marketing campaigns and keep the messages of bus travel as simple as possible.
Phil Berry & Tim Bryan | Travel Shop Advisors
Tim Bryan is the latest person to join the Travel Shop Team at the Bluestar Travel Shop. Tim has over 30 years of dealing with the public from a travel shop he worked in for a different company, as well as assisting customers when working on the railway. In his spare time, Tim enjoys watching planes and often visits air shows and airports. He enjoys dealing with people and is looking forward to a long and happy time here at Bluestar.
Phil has over 40 years experience in the customer service industry, but has spent the last 18 years in the transport industry, 13 with a train company and the last 5 with Bluestar. Phil enjoys working with people and loves going on cruises. To date he has been on more than 12.
Their duties include issuing tickets, giving public transport advice, processing feedback and complaints, assisting customers with lost property, and helping at local events.