The New Skyride??????

I have one very direct question for you sir, Do you you accept 1 800 Skyride Gift certificates? I just called and talked to a sales person named "Derrick" (may be spelled differently), so I have the answer, I want you to give a straight answer to this question publicly.



Note, I spelled it the way the company spells it to prevent you from saying you don't accept "sLyride" gc's.

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I have one very direct question for you sir, Do you you accept 1 800 Skyride Gift certificates? I just called and talked to a sales person named "Derrick" (may be spelled differently), so I have the answer, I want you to give a straight answer to this question publicly.



Note, I spelled it the way the company spells it to prevent you from saying you don't accept "sLyride" gc's.

Well,
Mr Chicagoland,
We're waiting.

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I have one very direct question for you sir, Do you you accept 1 800 Skyride Gift certificates? I just called and talked to a sales person named "Derrick" (may be spelled differently), so I have the answer, I want you to give a straight answer to this question publicly.



Note, I spelled it the way the company spells it to prevent you from saying you don't accept "sLyride" gc's.

Well,
Mr Chicagoland,
We're waiting.

Finally someone addresses the elephant in the room

PROskydiving's goal is not to become the highest ranked website in the industry and get between potential customers and dropzones. We are creating tools to help dropzones become more streamlined so they can work smarter, not harder. At this stage of the game, we have not implemented any national marketing campaigns, but when we do, we hope to be sponsoring events, athletes, wrapping over-the-road trucks, national magazine ads, etc - advertising that individual DZs could never afford on their own, nor would they even want to advertise a local business all over the country. PROskydiving allows us to market nationally and drive business locally.

We do take a small cut of every tandem that books, but only when our payment processing system is used. In other words, if the DZ books someone via the phone and enters the customer into the PROskydiving reservation system and does not use our payment system, there is no fee at all. In reality, a DZ could opt in to this system, use it internally and pay no fees whatsoever. We spent over $75,000 to build this system and we're willing to share it for free. That's how confident we are that our tools will be welcomed by the overworked DZ staff.

As for hiring someone to answer the phones, that could be effective, but over the past three years, my DZ has gone from 28% online sales to 56%. The consumer expects the ability to book online and get everything done without picking up the phone. Regardless of your thoughts, that's where business is going. If DZs don't get on-board in some way, they risk losing everything. We're not saying they have to join our network, but hopefully everyone will see the advantage.

Doug

Sorry, I was out all weekend.

MY DZ is in the same situation that most DZs are in. Yes, we do take SkyRide GCs at my DZ, but only because we can't afford to let all of the business go to the competing DZs. Unfortunately, this is what keeps SkyRIde going, but at the end of the day, we all need the business to keep those expensive turbine aircraft running for you guys.

Doug

So your business depends on lying, cheating, and stealing? Skyride won't go away until dropzone owners make the hard decision to make them go away. I can't even believe you're building a legitimate competing business and continue to use skyride. When your dropzone stops using skyride, maybe my dropzone will start using proskydiving. Shit, I'm more inclined to start using skyride since you're doing a better job advertising for them than your own product.

Dave

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At this stage of the game, we have not implemented any national marketing campaigns,

So the primary reason a DZ would be interested in a booking service, which would be to attract new business not already searching the web for a DZ, is not in place. So what then is your purpose?

Moving on, you say this -

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We do take a small cut of every tandem that books, but only when our payment processing system is used. In other words, if the DZ books someone via the phone and enters the customer into the PROskydiving reservation system and does not use our payment system, there is no fee at all. In reality, a DZ could opt in to this system, use it internally and pay no fees whatsoever.

- and shortly after, you say this -

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over the past three years, my DZ has gone from 28% online sales to 56%.

So which one is it? Can the DZ opt in and pay no fees, or, by your own admission, opt in and pay a fee on 56% (and growing) of their bookings? You can't have it both ways.

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The consumer expects the ability to book online and get everything done without picking up the phone.

The only reason they would have this expectation is if it was available in some areas but not in others. In all reality, tandem customers have no 'expectations' because these are first time consumers in this area.

Skyride is a case in point here. Why would you agree to drive for hours to get to a DZ, pay a big plane fee, and other bullshit fees? Becasue you've never bought a tandem before, can only assume that what you're getting is the standard in the industry. If all of those customers had been in contact with an honest, local DZ, not a single one of them would have been wondering how much the 'big plane' fee was.

In this case, you're creating the expectation by injecting your website into the searches for local DZs in various markets. There are three DZs in northern Ohio, and not one has web-only sales. No consumer in this area would expect that until you show up with your site. You are creating the expectation, and the need for DZ to be on board with you to meet that expectation.

Here's where it gets really bad, you say -

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Yes, we do take SkyRide GCs at my DZ, but only because we can't afford to let all of the business go to the competing DZs. Unfortunately, this is what keeps SkyRIde going,

-and then you go on to say, in regards to your service -

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If DZs don't get on-board in some way, they risk losing everything.

That's why I use words like greedy and parasite. You know exactly what you're doign because you've been a victim of the 'extortion' yourself. Either you play ball, or the other guy will, and you'll lose out on all that business. Of course, even when you play ball you lose because you have to do that much more business to overcome the fees from the 'booking service' to realize the same profits at the end of the year.

Being a victim of this, you should be ashamed to be rolling out the next wave of the same scam. Anyway you want to 'business talk' the thing up being 'streamlined' and offering 'tools', at the end of the day you are reaching your hands into the pockets of DZs who have nothing to do with you aside from the customers you draw into your website from their locality. Nothing.

Once you have their customers, however, they are forced to have something to do with you, because if they don't, their competitor across town will. Sound familiar?

In the end, I thought this was the most telling of all -
we all need the business to keep those expensive turbine aircraft running for you guys.
***

That's right, YOU need all the business to keep the turbines running at YOUR DZ. What keeps the turbines running at the DZ where you are taking their profits to your DZ? What about their competitor across town who isn't in your 'program', what keeps their turbines running while you funnel the lions share of the local business to your 'partner DZ' across town?

I understand the internet is an important tool for marketing in this day and age, but in the end the size of the market dictates the level of marketing needed.

I have a favorite local Thai place that is a sole-proprietership. I looked up their website the other day because I lost my take-out menu. The website was stone simple, but did have the hours, address, phone and a PDF of the menu, and that was perfect. They don't need web ordering, I didn't have to create an account, and there were no videos or blog. The reason this circa 1998 website works is because they are local business looking only to cater to local customers, and needing only to compete with other local businesses. Sound familiar?

DZs are local businesses, and they are only trying to attract local customers, and should only be competing for those customers with other local DZs. The size of the market will dictate the size of the marketing effort. Perris and Elsinore will drop a pretty penny or two on marketing to draw from the tens of millions of people in their area. Skydive East Kansas City and Skydive West Kansas City will have a markedly smaller marketing budget.

The long and short of it is that Perris or Skydive East Kansas City would both be better off without you anywhere near their market. Their best option is to deal with only their local competitors, and let the market itself set the bar for the marketing budget.

When you roll in with your $75,000 website you set the bar impossibly high for DZs. The difference is that to compete with you, they would all need to spend $75,000 each, but you only have to spend $75,000 once, combine it with the magic of the internet, and now you can hold DZs everywhere hostage so they either play ball, or get out-marketed by your efforts.

I'm willing to accept that you think your system is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'll maintain that you're a crook who got tired of being a victim, and jumped ship to be the victimizer yourself. I don't wish you luck or success in your efforts.

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Sorry, I was out all weekend.

MY DZ is in the same situation that most DZs are in. Yes, we do take SkyRide GCs at my DZ, but only because we can't afford to let all of the business go to the competing DZs. Unfortunately, this is what keeps SkyRIde going, but at the end of the day, we all need the business to keep those expensive turbine aircraft running for you guys.

Doug

So just how many DZ's in your area take sLyride GC's? According to my DZ's page, there are several DZO's who have contacted me and requested to be added as DZ's who do not accept the GC's. As far as I know, you are the only DZO who has not requested to be added, So apparently, you are the only one who accepts them. So your excuse that "we can't afford to let all of the business go to the competing DZs" does not stand up very well, does it?
I noticed that just after I converted my DZ site to the consumer alert, you had removed the link from the "Non-PROskydiving" DZ's list. Now we know why.

I meant that 56% of our total revenue in 2009 was generated online. I personally do not see any similarity between the PROskydiving business model and SkyRide. We are not a booking service (unless they choose to book on PROskydiving.com), but rather an online reservation solution for the skydiving industry. We don't deal with the customers directly - all of the information is managed by the DZ and the customer never talks to anyone from PRO. The customer knows they are dealing with a 3rd party from the minute they start the process. If they don't like it, they can click right thru to the DZ's website.

If your DZ would like to streamline their internal operation and push reservations out to their website, we can help. If they don't, that's fine.

I don't understand your post. Skydive Midwest is only about an hour north of us and takes SkyRide.

All of this bullshit across the country is what is going to kill the sport, because the mom & pop 182 backbone of the industry for years is going to the way side, or i should say being run out of the industry by the greed and mega supersize dz's who need every penny they can get their hands on to pay for the 1.5 million or so dollar aircraft.

While it may not happen over night, it's already happening and soon all you'll have left is a long drive to some big "skydive supercenter".

The genie is out of the bottle and sadly there is no putting it back in the bottle. There have always been a side of the sport that had the dirtbag crooks, thieves and scumbags, it was a small minority of the sports population, now that side of the sport has a foothold and money to burn by ripping off and finding a way to get their hands in the cash box of every dz who has not the capital to out market the crooks.

Pretty sad really.

And we won't even get into the nasty backstabbing of local politics added in, like going around a town of a start up dz and handing out flyers and attending city meetings that say how unsafe and bad skydiving is to a community of your competitors place. There is a new breed of lowlifes taking over and doing their best to shit on this sport and while doing it they all claim they do it for the "love of the sport" or "to keep you jumping turbines" and are smiling all the way to the bank, kind of like fucking you in the ass and trying to tell you it's really only a proctologists exam.

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I don't understand your post. Skydive Midwest is only about an hour north of us and takes SkyRide.

What's not to understand? That page is nowhere near complete, so if there's another DZ in your area that takes them, that DZO has not contacted me to be added on the page or has not publicly admitted to accepting them. If we had a master list straight from sLyride, It would be easier, but as expected, that would be a cold day in hell. And because so far, you are the ONLY DZO who has admitted publicly or via pm that accepts the GC's, We can only go off the previous list posted here on DZ.com.

You're never going to get DZOs to admit they're taking them, besides, most DZOs don't read these threads. I know I don't, but I wanted to address this one to make sure the information that is being spread about my company is accurate.

I'm not proud of dealing with SkyRide, but I have to pay the bills.

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I'm not proud of dealing with SkyRide, but I have to pay the bills.

With dirty or even stolen money?

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I meant that 56% of our total revenue in 2009 was generated online

That was very clear. You stated that a DZ could by-pass your fees if the tandem booked with them directly, but if it was done online, then you would indeed get a cut. You went on to state that 56% of your business was now online, and that it was on an upward trend. My point was that even if DZ could avoid fees by not booking online, with your system in place, the majority (and growing) of bookings are going to be done online.

What I'm getting at is that you do indeed take a cut of the profits. Your concession to allowing no-fee phone reservation for DZ is, by your own admission, not much of a consession.

Beyond that, your own position is that consumers want to buy 'click only' over the web. So you draw them into your website, then give them option to buy online, or do further work to read another webstie, and make a phone call. So again you're offering them exactly what they want, and collecting a fee, but you give the DZ the option to not pay a fee if the customer books over the phone.

Here again we have a case where if the consumer had no option to buy over the web, they could easily deal directly with their own local DZ. The existance of your website creates the problem of DZ having to compete with online booking. No website would equal no problem.

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The customer knows they are dealing with a 3rd party from the minute they start the process.

I'll revisit the concept that these are fist time consumers in this market, and have very little knowledge of the business end of skydiving.

How many tandem students are aware that DZ are almost exclusively sole-propieterships? Or that in this day and age, there is no corporate giant who owns and operates the majority of skydiving centers?

My guess is none, and that they do not actually know who they are dealing with when working with your website. Again, look at Skyride as an example. It was the ignorance of the consumer that allowed Skyride to run roughshot over them with their dis-honest business tactics. The consumer accepts that as the de-facto business practice in skydiving, and happily (at the time of purchase) pay the 'big plane' fee.

What it comes down to is that you are a bookign service without the hallmark of a booking service. If I went into the hanger at a DZ one day and said,"Who can finsh this tune.. 'Expedia....", my guess is that at least half would chime in with, "Dot coooom".

Or if I asked who knew what a 'Travel Gnome' is, the same percentage would reply he was the mascot for Travelocity.

How is this possible? Easy, they run an effective national advertising campaign. You are not running any such campaign. To be making bookings online, in the absence of any such campaign, is straight up internet hijacking of customers.

The key to analyzing any business arrangement is to asses the cost/benefit ratio. Without generating new business, and simply intercepting the existing business, there is no benefit to the DZ. The DZ would have been better off without your website, left to manage it's own local customers who were already searching for a DZ in their area.

These are people who live near the DZ, who were seraching for a DZ in their locality, who end up sendng a portion of their money directly into your pocket. There is no benefit to the DZ or consumer. Both would have benefitted from a direct transaction. The DZ would have made more money, and in turn been able to offer the customer a better expereince becasue of the increased revenue. Bigger faster plane? More rigs for faster turns? Air conditioning in the gear up room?

Nobody but you benefits from your website booking tandems who were already looking for a DZ. Spin it anyway you want, but you wouldn't drop $75,000 on a website if you didn't think you could make ten times that over the next few years. That's all money NOT going into the pockets of local DZOs actaully providing skydiving services to local customers.

I don't buy your "competing DZ" excuse at all. You've demonstrated that you have the ability to out market most any DZO out there, and possibly even sLyride, so I have to call "Bullshit" to your excuse.

Many DZs are currently taking a form of online reservations. Some of them are taking credit cards via the web without any security and none of them have a back-end system to manage the content that comes from these sources. We are simply offering DZs a secure method to take online reservations from their own websites. For the percentage we take, we are giving them use of our system as well as national marketing exposure. If you don't understand or appreciate our business model, I am sorry. We are quite proud of it.

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Most small DZOs have a cell phone attached to their heads all day long talking to customers, taking reservations, etc.

This is a point I wanted to touch on.

It's now been established that you get a cut off of every tandem that books through your website. It's also been established that a DZ can bypass your fees by booking over the phone. I don't know what that cut is, but I'll guess $30, which is less than I have heard Skyride takes.

So a DZO who gets on board with you, and -

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turn their static, informational website into a 24-hour business tool

-will be discouraging customers from booking over the phone where the DZO would not have to cut you in on the deal. You may indeed give them a pass on paying you your cut, but you'll be doing everything in power to direct customers into web-based sales.

The real point is this - the DZO can easily answer his own phone during the week. If he's too busy to handle that, he has the revenue to hire someone to answer the phone.

On busy weekend days, bring in a part time worker to the office to handle the phones. It's not hard to find a young new jumper willing to work from 10 to 4 in the office on Sat to make extra money to jump with on Sun. On top of that, youcould offer them $12 or $14 an hour in jump money which only costs the DZO $10 an hour in actual costs.

So for $60/day you get an extra office person to work the peak hours and cover the phone. As an added bonus, when the phone isn't ringing, they are there to help with waivers, manifest, or run the cash drawer. Let's see your website do that.

Assuming you do ding the DZ for $30 a head, if the phone operator books two tandems, the DZO saved enough by not dealing with you to pay the guy for the days work. If he books 3 or more, the DZO is ahead money.

Until you can generate new, unique customers for a DZ, you're not doing anything but butting into their existing business and helping yourself to a cut of the profits.

In truth, I'm not sure that your service would be of value even if you did implement a national advertising campaign. Unless you are advertising on NBC/ABC/CBS at primetime, your advertsing will not help every DZ across the country. Smaller DZ in smaller markets won't benefit from anything less than that.

The reason that travel booking services can benefit their clients (airlines, hotels, etc) is that these are national businesses. Motel 6 knows that national advertising will be of greater benefit to their hotels in the big cites as opposed to the locations in smaller towns. However, being a national chain, the big reveune increases of the big city location when combined with the smaller returns felt in the small town locations will average out to a company wide increase in revenue.

Last time I checked, the smaller DZs in smaller towns get no benefit from increases in reveunue at Perris, Spaceland, or SDC. The huge populations will create for more effective advertising around L.A., Houston, and Chicago, but none of this benefit will trickle down to small DZ not near those population centers.

A booking service of any kind is not a benefit to local businesses only targeting local customers.

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I'm not proud of dealing with SkyRide, but I have to pay the bills.

Your position is morally bankrupt. A pox on your DZ's house.

Online booking is a smart thing for any DZ to do. People buy everything online. I am willing to bet some people choose a dropzone because they could book online at one and would have to call the other. If everything else was equal, I'd probably make my decision that way. I have no problem with a business that provides online booking for dropzones. I haven't looked into what exactly they're offering, but if it integrates into the DZ's website, it might be worthwhile.

But at the same time I think it would be incredibly silly for a dropzone to pay per tandem for a service like that unless there was real marketing involved. It would probably be considerably cheaper in the long run to pay someone to set up a custom reservation system on their site... if they can't find a volunteer!

Dave

Are there 'plug and play' add ons that would allow someone to simply update their webpage with online payment capabilities?

I have seen people set up PayPal accounts and use that, but are there any that are a bit more 'seemless'?

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Are there 'plug and play' add ons that would allow someone to simply update their webpage with online payment capabilities?

I have seen people set up PayPal accounts and use that, but are there any that are a bit more 'seemless'?

I know for a fact that Godaddy does. It's something like $20 or $40 a year for the program. It includes the shopping cart, online store, the payment system with includes the Paypal info, the scheduling and the whole shootin' match.

I think the only extra you'd need is the SSL with is another $20. Most secure sites have the little logo at the bottom of the site. Some are Godaddy, some are Verisign etc.

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Sorry, I was out all weekend.

MY DZ is in the same situation that most DZs are in. Yes, we do take SkyRide GCs at my DZ, but only because we can't afford to let all of the business go to the competing DZs. Unfortunately, this is what keeps SkyRIde going, but at the end of the day, we all need the business to keep those expensive turbine aircraft running for you guys.

Doug

Skyride was found culpable in the AZ lawsuit for good reason.

IMO, ANY DZO who cooperates with Skyride is aiding and abetting their scummy and unethical behavior.

Sorry I spoke up for you on a previous post.

I'll be encouraging DZ owners I know not to do business with PROSKYDIVING.COM.

what changed your mind?