Tag Archives: tourism

Online Advertising Blues

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Or how to lose half a day in front of a computer.

I am the owner of a small business, Flying M Air, LLC. I do just about everything for the company except maintain the aircraft: schedule flights, preflight the aircraft, fly, take payment from passengers, manage the drug testing program, work with the FAA, meet with clients, negotiate contracts, arrange for special events, hire contract workers, record transactions, handle invoicing and receivables, pay bills, create print marketing materials like business cards and rack cards, etc. I also handle the online presence for the company, including the company website, Facebook, and Twitter.

(You might wonder how I have the skills to do all this stuff. The truth is, I have a BBA in Accounting and lots of business training from college. I also wrote books about computers for 20+ years, including several about building websites and using Twitter. Sadly I never studied helicopter repair.)

Today, I lost half a day to marketing and related online chores that were mind-bogglingly time consuming.

You see, I scheduled an event with a local resort, Cave B Estate Winery & Resort in Quincy, WA. Cave B is one of the destinations I take people on winery tours, although I admit I don’t go there very often. For the same price, folks can go to Tsillan Cellars in Chelan, which they seem to prefer. Cave B has a better restaurant and a more interesting atmosphere in a beautiful place. Tsillan Cellars is also in a beautiful place, but it’s a bit touristy for my taste. I actually don’t care which one I fly to since I can’t drink wine at either one. I just like to fly people to wineries.

But the new manager at Cave B Resort is very eager to get the helicopter onsite as an interesting activity for guests. So we set up a 6-hour event there for Saturday, July 2. I’d land in the field as I usually do and offer 15-minute helicopter tours of the area for $75/person. While that might seem kind of steep, it’s pretty much in line with my usual rates. Besides, the folks who stay at Cave B aren’t exactly cheapskates. (I just looked into booking a room for my upcoming birthday and decided that it was a bit too rich for my blood, at least this year. I think I’ll settle for a spa day.)

Setting up this event required me to complete a bunch of tasks on my computer:

  • Tour Flyer
    I threw together this flyer based on a template in Microsoft Word.

    Create a flyer in PDF format that could be used at the resort to let guests know that tours were available that day. I cheated: I used one of the Templates that came with Word 2011 (which I’m still using on my Mac). I already had pictures; I just had to put in the text and make it fit. It took about 30 minutes to complete and I had to make one change after sending it to Cave B’s manager. They’ll print it out on a color printer and, hopefully, put one in each room on Friday.

  • Use Square‘s item feature to set up an item for the tours so I could easily charge passengers for the flights and sell them online. I’ve been experimenting with online sales lately as a tool to get impulse buyers to buy in advance in certain predetermined time slots. So setting up the item also required me to set up the time slots and then create an inventory feature to prevent me from overselling a time slot. This took another 30 minutes or so. This had to be done before I finished the flyer so I could include the URL in the flyer.
  • Use bit.ly to create a custom short URL for Flying M Air’s online store. No one could remember the regular URL; maybe they can remember bitly.com/FlyingMAir. This took about 5 minutes. Of course, this also had to be done before the flyer was done so the URL could be included.

  • Tour Announcement
    Here’s the top part of the web page I created to announce the special event.

    Create a “blog post” on Flying M Air’s website (which was built with the WordPress CMS) to announce the event, provide details, and include the link for buying tickets. Once the post was published, I had to go back and add a featured image so it would appear in the slideshow of items at the top of the Home page. I also had to add an expiration date so that it would stop appearing as a “special” on the site after July 2 at 5 PM. Doing all this took at least another 30 minutes. My WordPress site is designed to automatically post a link to new items on Twitter for both Flying M Air and my own personal account, so at least I didn’t have to fiddle with Twitter.

  • Create a new event on Facebook for the Cave B Tours. That meant using pretty much the same photo, description, and link I’d put in the flyer in a Facebook form. Because Facebook requires a “Category” for each event and they’re not very creative with the category names, there’s now a “Festival” at Cave B that day. (Sheesh.) This took at least another 20 minutes.
  • Share the event with my friends on Facebook. Why not, right? Five minutes.
  • Post details on Cave B’s Facebook page for the event. I got lazy and put in a screen shot of the flyer. 5 minutes.
  • When I realized that I could probably sell the flight to and from Cave B that I’d have to deadhead for the event, I created a “Be Spontaneous” special offer on Flying M Air’s website, offering up the roundtrip flight for half price: $272.50. That’s less than my cost and a real smoking deal for anyone who wants two great helicopter flights and six hours at Cave B. (I’m thinking lunch, tasting, and a hike.) This took about 30 minutes.
  • I also had to set up an item in Square for this offer so I could make it easy to charge for or sell it online. No special URL was required, but I did have to put the link to the item in Flying M Air’s online store in the special offer post. Twenty minutes.
  • While I was fiddling with my website, I checked the Special Offers category and discovered a whole bunch of expired offers. So I recategorized them as Expired Offers. Then I spent some time adding a subscription form to the Special Offers page and made sure that page appeared in the slider at the top of the Home page. Anyone who subscribes automatically gets new posts by email; this is a great way to learn about special offers as they become available. I know I spent at least an hour on this.

Of course, while I was working on this, I was also taking calls from a potential client (in the U.K., of all places), texting back and forth with photographers that could help me close a deal with her, and writing reminders for the other things I needed to do at my desk: order wall mount display cabinets from Ikea, choose a garage door opener option (after researching the three options), and send out invitations for a outing on my boat the next day. So I wasn’t 100% focused on the tasks at hand.

I was only mildly surprised when I looked up after that last task and saw that it was after 1 PM.

The whole morning was shot. (No wonder I was hungry.)

But this is typical when I sit in front of my computer — and is why I spend a lot less time in front of my computer these days. Business tasks need to be done and I’m the one that has to do them. It’s a fact of life and I’m not complaining. Just trying to point out that marketing a business isn’t as easy as putting up a website and waiting for the phone to ring — especially with so much social media to deal with.

Helicopter Tours in Wine Country

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The reality for would-be helicopter operators.

I got yet another email from yet another helicopter pilot interested in doing the kind of work I do. He’s currently in the military, based overseas, and emailed me about his situation and an idea. I deleted his original message after responding, but did retain this:

Have you looked at increasing your footprint with a business partner and second helicopter? From reviewing your website it seems you have the perfect job and location to cater to the wine industry of central WA.

At Martin Scott
Here’s my helicopter, parked in a great landing zone at one of my favorite wineries. Unfortunately, the winery’s insurance company told them I could no longer land there. This year’s challenge: getting them to reverse their decision.

This made me laugh. “Perfect job and location to cater to the wine industry.” I’m not sure whether the author of this message understands the realities of the wine industry in this area. Yes, there are wineries in the Wenatchee area. In fact, there’s one about 1/2 mile down the road from where I live. But the dozen or so wineries near here don’t need helicopter service. And most of them either don’t want it, can’t support it with a safe landing zone, or have insurance-related restrictions that make operation on their premises impossible.

Of course, there are more wineries in the Chelan area, about 20 minutes flight time north of here. But there’s also another Part 135 operator up there with a business virtually identical to mine. The cost of me getting up there to service wineries in that area would make me far more expensive than that pilot, who is based right there. So I have to limit my Chelan activities with offering round trip flights from Wenatchee to Chelan — just as he’d likely limit his flights in Wenatchee to flights originating in Chelan. Simple economics of supply and demand.

I responded:

Thanks for writing, but no, I’m definitely not interested in adding a partner or helicopter. There isn’t enough business in the area for me, especially with competition in nearby Chelan. A second helicopter would add cost without revenue.

If you’re interested in building a tour business to serve the wine industry, I suggest Tri-Cities or Walla Walla. They both have far more wineries and activity than the Wenatchee area.

Good luck.

The Tri-Cities and Walla Walla areas are much bigger wine-producing areas. There are dozens of wineries in each place, many of which are in rural areas that can support helicopter landing zones. I’ve even done a little research in the Walla Walla area and found a number of winery owners interested in helicopter winery tours to their facilities. Trouble is, Walla Walla is about 45 minutes each way from Wenatchee, so flights there would be too costly. And I’m not interested in relocating to Walla Walla.

But again, it all comes down to supply and demand. You need to base an operation in an area where there are a lot of potential clients who have a lot of disposable income. After all, how many people are interested in spending $500 or more on a few hours of entertainment for up to three people? And if you’ve found the perfect place to offer helicopter tour services, chances are, there’s already an operator there. Now you’re dealing with competition which makes it even harder to get off the ground because you have to share that potential client pool with someone who is already known in the area.

And then there’s the problems faced by a Twitter/Facebook friend in the Margaret River area of Australia. He started a helicopter charter service, Wild Blue Helicopters, in that wine region and was soon plagued by noise complaints from the locals. One of those locals took matters into his own hands by vandalizing my friend’s helicopter, causing several thousand dollars in damage. After making a major investment in his business there, he’s abandoning it because he’s simply tired of dealing with the problems the locals are causing. Who wants that?

Why don’t people see this? Why do so many pilots think that all they need to do is buy a helicopter, move to an interesting place, and hang out a shingle for the clients and money to start rolling in?

I thought I was done with the conversation, but he replied. Again, he made me laugh.

Thanks Maria! I’m not sure how to do it but I think it would be a lovely way to spend a few years. Do you enjoy it?

“Lovely.” It would be lovely if I were independently wealthy and didn’t need to make a living as a pilot.

I responded with the brutal honesty I’m known for:

I enjoy the flying, but there simply isn’t enough of it.

And after 14 years in this business — in Arizona and now in Washington — I’m tired of dealing with potential clients who can’t respect the value of my services and understand the cost of operating a helicopter. Too many cheapskates. Too many people who think I’ll spend an hour preflighting/postflighting my aircraft to take their 8 year old kid for a 10-minute birthday ride for $25.

If you think you’re going to get into this business and make a good living at it right away, think again. It took more than 5 years for my business to support itself and another 3 years for it to become profitable enough to support me. I was fortunate to have another income for those 8 years; most people don’t. It’s a difficult business to succeed in.

I’ve written about this extensively on my blog, https://aneclecticmind.com/

My advice? Get a job flying for someone else. Let them have the headaches and costs of dealing with aircraft maintenance and the FAA. Fly, get a paycheck, spend your off time with your friends and family.

Now I’m sure lots of folks who don’t operate helicopter charter businesses in Washington’s wine country — or small helicopter charter businesses in a big city like Phoenix, where I used to be based — will take this opportunity to bash my business skill and blame me for my belated success. My response to you: If you think you’re so smart, you try it. And then let us all know how you do.

You might want to read this, too.

As for this pilot, I hope he makes the right decision for his future.

Missing Grandma at Muir Woods

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Funny what you think about when you’re wandering among the giant trees.

I went to Muir Woods on Saturday, on my way home from whale watching. It was my third or fourth visit ever.

Muir Woods National Monument is a valley just north of San Francisco that’s filled with groves of giant redwood trees along a small creek. It features a boardwalk and paved pathway, several other trails, and signage to help you understand the ecology and history of the woods.

All the other times I’ve been there have been late in the day when the place was mostly deserted. On Saturday, I arrived at 5 PM and although the place was definitely emptying out, it was pretty obvious that it had been packed earlier in the day; there were cars parked along the road for at least two miles leading up to the park entrance with so many people walking back to them that I thought the cars were for some big party at Muir Beach.

In Muir Woods
It was dark down at the base of the tall trees.

Along the creek
There wasn’t much water in Redwood Creek, but it was picturesque, anyway.

Because of the time of day and the angle of the sun and the park geography, the pathways were in dark shadows. But if you looked up toward the tops of the giant trees, you’d see the sun still shining on them. Still, I didn’t take many pictures. Instead, I just walked along the pathways along the creek at my own pace, thinking about what I was seeing and trying to tune out the noise of the tourists all around me.

I remembered my first visit to Muir Woods, years before in January. Back in the 1990s, I was a regular speaker at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I’d fly out for a few days — usually with my future wasband — see the show, do my speaking thing, and then spend some time in the area. Airfare and hotel costs in the city were a write-off as a business expense. The vacation tacked on afterward was just fun. One year we visited Napa Valley, another year we visited Sonoma Valley, another year we went south to Monterrey and St. Louis Obispo, and another year we headed to Hawaii. Those were great trips in days long gone.

I don’t remember which year we first went to Muir Woods. But I do remember the quiet of the woods and seeing two salmon heading up stream to spawn in water that was barely deep enough to cover them. One male, one female, several hundred feet apart, struggling to move upstream. I wanted so badly to just grab one of them and put it with the other one in the same pool of water so they could go about their business and die.

I don’t remember the park being very crowded or noisy. I just remembered it being dark and kind of hushed.

It was dark on Saturday, but definitely not hushed.

Even when signs asked visitors to “Enter Quietly” — as they do upon entry to the Cathedral Grove — people called back and forth to each other and kids screamed and cried. I could have been at the mall.

I tried hard to tune it all out, focusing on the tall, straight trees. And when I made a turn down a pathway and found myself in a little cul-de-sac with a bench before a huge tree, I found myself thinking about my grandmother.

Born in 1912 as one of eight children, my grandmother was a hardworking woman who never experienced much outside the world of her home in the New York Metro area. In the 1980s, when I had a job that required a lot of business travel, and then later, when I traveled with my future wasband, I’d send her a postcard from everyplace I went. That and television were he exposures to the rest of the country. When she died in 2002, we found a shoebox with all those postcards inside it. She’d kept every single one.

I found myself thinking about the last time I’d gone hiking with her. She was in her late 70s at the time and still very active, working part-time as a hostess in a family restaurant. I’d taken her to the State Line Lookout in Palisades Interstate Parkway and we’d walked one of the trails through the woods. I’d been worried about her when I realized how steep the trail was in parts, but I didn’t need to. At one point, I saw her stabbing a branch she’d picked up as a walking stick into a hole alongside the trail. When I asked her what she was doing, she told he she’d seen a snake go in the hole. Someone else’s grandmother (or mother or girlfriend, for that matter) might have screamed and run the other way. But not my grandmother. She was tough.

As I stood in the clearing at the base of the tree, I realized that the path through the woods was made so that everyone could enjoy the wonder of the trees, no matter how old or young they were. I found myself wishing that I could have brought my grandmother there. I could imagine her awe as she looked up and realized just how tall that tree was. Or when she looked at the base of the tree and realized just how big the trunk was.

“For crimsey’s sake!” she’d say. None of us knew where that came from but we knew that when she said it, it meant she was impressed. It was like me saying “Holy cow!” (or “Holy shit!”)

I wished I could shown her the big trees. Or the Grand Canyon. Or the view from my helicopter on a flight along the Pacific Coast. Or even the giant cactus that grew in my yard in Arizona or the amazing view from my homesite in Washington. The incredible but normal things beyond her limited range of travel and experience.

The things we take for granted as we make our way through life. The things we don’t miss if we never see them at all.

I miss you, Grandma.