Folks: Today was supposed to be a big day for East Coast Aero Club. Having sold 2600 coupons for a helicopter intro lesson at $69 back in March (posting), we figured that we’d sell a lot more sightseeing rides at $99 today. After all, there are far more people who go on helicopter sightseeing rides worldwide than there are who embark upon flight training. So far, however, the sales rate on the sightseeing rides is much slower. How to account for the comparatively sluggish sales?
Here are some theories:
- Bostonians who love helicopters already bought the $69 intro lesson
- everyone is busy packing up for the holiday weekend rather than buying stuff
- the two-day deadline encourages people to wait to buy and it would actually be better if the deadline were tighter (though I think last time it was supposed to be open for two days and we cut it off at 2600)
- people already have their summer plans in place and March is a better time of year to sell an activity than end of May
- the marketing copy for this deal is not as strong; there is no mention of foliage season and no mention of a graduation present (the original copy, which we had changed at about noon, had some confusing language about how there was a 1 coupon/customer limit but 3 people were required to go on the flight)
- a helicopter crash in Boxboro, Massachusetts on Wednesday, which killed an FAA examiner giving a checkride to a helicopter instructor applicant, put everyone in the Boston area off the idea of getting into a helicopter (this was in the news and was only the fourth fatal helicopter accident in Massachusetts since 1995)
- the price of $99 is too high for an impulse purchase (we could do a $69 ride but it would have to be shorter)
- something else?
Theories would be appreciated.
[Regarding the crash on May 26, the applicant reported that a simulated engine failure turned into a real engine failure and they weren’t over an airport or other open area where it is easy to make a good touchdown autorotation. They tried to make it to a road but came up short and hit trees. I believe that the helicopter was a fuel-injected Schweizer (1950s-design trainer) and we won’t use fuel-injected engines in our trainer Robinsons because they have a reputation for quitting when the throttle is rolled down to idle. Mike Wheeler, the FAA inspector who was killed, had most of his experience in turbine helicopters and in our Robinsons (the FAA rents the machines from us periodically so that their employees can maintain currency). The helicopters that he had flown would not have had this weakness so he very likely was unprepared for the engine stoppage. I flew with Mike a week ago for an FAA Part 135 checkride (to fly charters). I saw him the day of the accident as he got into this Schweizer helicopter on the Signature ramp (the helicopter had come up from a flight school based in Norwood, MA). He was tough, fair, and did his best to be helpful. We will miss him.]
I bought 2 of the intro lessons and looked at the sightseeing, but decided to pass. I’ll offer my own thoughts as I read through the second offer.
$99 is no issue for me. However, as a PP-ASEL and Skylane owner, I’m pretty comfortable with high per hour hobby costs.
3 people was a big issue for me and was ultimately the deal-killer. I’d be happy to take the flight with Kris, and I suspect it’s a good couples opportunity. Obviously, we’d want to sit in the back seat (probably), but it’s not clear that we’d want to have a third random passenger with us (on the intercom, etc). Combining these two points, I’ll answer “yes” to “would I be willing to pay $150 per person to make you the same revenue per flight?”.
For many people, I suspect you inadvertantly set an anchor price of $69 for “helicopter neat one-time experience” and you may have depleted the market and/or simply had people thinking “didn’t I just see this for $69 a few weeks ago? Are they trying to screw me on the price now?”
I’ll mention a few other things I recall from the copy (it seems groupon is down right now, so I can’t tell which version of the copy I saw-groupon being down might also be a factor if they’ve been up/down all day):
1. I didn’t get a clear message as to the length of the flight.
2. I didn’t get a clear message of what we might be able to do (you mention foliage above, but having flown over the city a couple times in a fixed-wing and once in a doors-open Huey, I think you could have done a better “sell” on seeing the city at low altitude).
3. You also had a few caveats that are natural for pilots to include, but don’t make for good marketing. You mentioned fairly prominently “We only fly in good weather for safety”, raising the question of “Is this safe?” and “We are at the whims of Logan ATC, so we might not be able to do what you want to do.” Of course that’s true, but I’m not sure how relevant it is. It puts a negative frame of mind into people, and I think those might have also been at the end of the copy, ending the pitch on a down note.
4. I also seem to recall that the ratio of groupon price to regular price was more compelling for the first offer.
I suspect if you reversed the order of the two offers, you’d have sold a crapload of sightseeing flights and might have been wondering why the lessons were selling so poorly (your reason #1, except I’d replace “love” with “are adventurous and curious about”)
I’m looking forward to the lesson though; bought a couple helo texts on Amazon and will read them over the long weekend.
I’m gonna say it’s something to do with the groupon servers. Every time I try to look at the ad I get an error. I will say the 2 day limit would leave me to ponder rather than jumping on the coupon. I would also say your audience is going to differ on the two items and the ones who want to sight see Boston likely don’t live in Boston (though I don’t know how wide a net was flung on this offer I’m just going by the previous one). Lastly even if I lived in Boston and wanted to go for a sight seeing ride there is another important difference. For $69 I could have had an intro lesson – cool, wish I lived in Boston – it stops there. For $99 I can have a sight seeing tour of Boston, cool, if I was there I’d consider it but – unlike the lesson which is somewhat a solitary activity the tour is not and I will also have to pay for my 2 kids and wife. So at least for family men I see the lesson as an opportunity to go for a cheap helicopter ride, the sightseeing tour is going to run almost 3 times as much minimum.
Jim: Thanks for the feedback. Why is length of flight a selling point? I figured that people want to see certain places. If it takes them 10 minutes, that’s fine. If it takes 30 minutes, that might also be okay. If it takes 60 minutes, that’s beginning to get boring/cramped. In fact, the Boston tour tends to be about 30 minutes in the air, but would 40 minutes be better? 20 minutes be worse?
I think that you’re right about the time being an issue. One of the very first questions was from a woman who was confused because our page says it is about 30 minutes and Fox News on its site said that it is a one-hour tour of Boston (how you could spend an hour over a rather small city at 100 mph is beyond me). I’m not sure if she wanted to be in the helicopter for an hour and would have been disappointed at 30 minutes or vice versa.
I had suggested to Groupon that they use some of the photos from http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/boston-helicopter-tours (showing the view from the helicopter), but they apparently didn’t like the idea. Of course, those photos are available for anyone who clicks through.
We didn’t have control over the Groupon marketing copy. We certainly would not have included “harpoon” in the first sentence! I wonder if we need a sample video of the flight so that it is more clear what is being delivered.
Well, I bought 3 tickets, for myself and my two older sons. (Over the objection of my wife by the way but at least I am leaving our youngest son with her). I was concerned that I would have to open two more accounts just to get tickets for the three of us, so that was certainly a bit confusing. I didn’t see the original Groupon deal but would not have signed up for that as I have no intention of becoming a helicopter pilot.
My feeling is that the saturation of the market in conjunction with the confusion of the multiple tickets is holding this deal back. Maybe a limit of one Groupon deal per season would be helpful to keep interest strong. On the other hand even if you get significantly fewer takers than for the first deal this should still be helpful to focus attention on your helicopter service.
I think it justs goes to the perception of value. I’m willing to pay more for a 30 minute experience than a 15 minute experience. I agree that anything over 45 minutes of Hobbs time is probably well past the point of diminishing returns, and even 45 minutes might be stretching it for some people.
(There’s also the hassle factor of driving out to Hanscom, waiting around for the 3rd stranger to show up, etc. And I’d rather “amortize” that hassle over a 30 minute fun experience than a 15 minute one.)
I also suspect that including the photos on the groupon copy would have been beneficial, but I’m very comfortable with the fact that I suck at marketing. 🙂
Am _I_ missing something? $69 to fly the helicopter* vs. $99 to ride in one, and you’re surprised the response is fivefold lower for the second option? (And there’s still 24 hours to go.) I think you’ve forgotten how cool it is to imagine flying something for the first time. I might mildly consider the $99 flight as a fun event. But I scrambled to buy the $69 groupon, and am looking forward to the training experience and meeting you or colleagues.
*Even if it’s only 10 feet in the air at Hanscom. Also, I realize that classroom time and testing is required, but this could be seen as an exciting experience also – a taste of pilot training.
John M and Jim S hit it, I think: perceived value. $69 for a lesson comes across as a bargain; $99 for a flight does not, really. Were I closer, I would have bought both, but the first is hugely more psychologically attractive.
Extending John M, Jim S, and Ewan, the $69 lesson is potentially not just a larger bargain than a $99 ride. Perhaps flight “lessons” could be rationalized as a potential investment in a childhood dream and are therefore more justifiable than an indulgent “tour” of the city.
$69 for a $225 lesson is a 70% discount off the rate card.
$99 for a $179 sightseeing tour is a 45% discount off of the rate card. It’s also at the low end for groupon discounts (most are well over 50%).
Drop the discounted sightseeing tour pricing to $50 and you are going to sell WAY more. You could have also raised the “off-the-shelf” price to around $330, kept the discounted price at $99 to give people their 70% off.
The sightseeing offer just isn’t as compelling.
Phil, your comments on time vs. value indicates that you have become disconnected from a layman’s view of things. Replace “helo ride” with “excellent massage” or, in a kid’s frame of mind, with “super playground play”, and re-ask yourself whether you imagine 30 minutes is better than 15. To the average person, “HELL YES!” is the response.
The time is not nearly as relevant in the small context of “was it fun?”, but it’s a big part of the perception of “will this be a good value?”.
I have never been in a heli and was thinking of renting time in one as a surprise for my wife. I abandoned the idea when the best price I could find for a craft to come pick us up at the closet helipad (here in Kyoto) was about $1/second engine time.
Chris: Thanks for the suggestion of pushing the price down to $50, but we can’t afford to lose money on sightseeing rides. With lessons we figure that some percentage of people who do an intro lesson will return at our standard rates. With sightseeing they might refer a friend, but otherwise we probably won’t see them again for 5-10 years.
I’m looking at the bookings on our scheduler right now. Nearly all are for groups of three. Our normal sightseeing business is almost always for groups of two. So it looks as though Groupon managed to scare off anyone who wasn’t willing to buy three tickets.
Random opinion of a passer-by on the other coast, opinion worth less than you paid for it: Helicopter flight is cool! “Sightseeing” is something like I have to be in tourist mode, liquoured up and wanting to take a break from people constantly trying to sell me timeshares or somesuch. It’s more an impulse buy. I hate to tell you how many “sightseeing” coupons my partner or I have gone out of our way to get for our area (SF Bay) and then let expire ’cause we never got around to actually booking the trip.
Personally, were I in the area, I’d spend my time learning something new and seeing if perhaps I’d be interested in pursuing a new hobby.
I never spend money on “rides” unless they are taking me somewhere.
I’d suspect that a lot of people out there are like me and are looking for something more out of an experience and their time/money than pretty visuals. The lesson implies that I’m going to learn something even if the lesson is brief and limited. Its a change for me to expand myself in some way.
I’ll pay for lessons. I’ve been in the sky enough for work. I’m sure a helicopter flight is something entirely different but honestly, it just doesn’t interest me like learning does.