How to Increase Tandem Bookings Without Destroying Your Margins

I've been researching dropzone problems a lot lately, and the same question keeps coming up: "How do I get more tandem bookings when everyone's tightening their wallets?" The knee-jerk reaction is always the same—run a discount, drop prices, offer a Groupon deal. But here's the problem: once you start competing on price, you're stuck in a race to the bottom that ends with razor-thin margins and burnout.

The truth is, most dropzones aren't losing bookings because they're too expensive. They're losing bookings because they're invisible when it matters, forgettable when customers bounce, and silent when they should be following up. The difference between a fully-booked weekend and one with empty slots usually isn't your pricing—it's your systems.

I learned this the hard way in real estate. I watched agents slash their commission rates trying to win listings, only to realize they were working twice as hard for half the money. Meanwhile, the top performers never competed on price. They competed on communication, follow-up speed, and customer experience. They were the ones who responded to inquiries in minutes instead of hours, who checked in with clients at exactly the right moments, who asked for referrals when emotions were still high.

The same principles apply to running a dropzone. So let's talk about how to actually grow your tandem bookings without destroying your margins in the process.

Before we dive into what works, let's talk about what doesn't: indiscriminate discounting. I'm not saying you should never run promotions or off-peak pricing—those can be strategic tools. But when your default response to slower bookings is to slash prices, you're training customers to wait for deals and simultaneously shrinking your ability to reinvest in the business.

Doug Garr at Chicagoland Skydiving Center wrote a great piece a few years back about how tandem prices in some markets dropped 30% while operating costs kept climbing. Think about that math: you're doing the same work, taking the same risk, using the same aircraft, and paying the same TIs... but you're getting paid 30% less per jump. That's not sustainable.

The alternative isn't to stubbornly keep prices high and hope for the best. It's to focus on the parts of your business that actually drive volume—and most of those don't cost thousands in ad spend or require slashing your tandem rate to Groupon levels.

Here's a question that's going to sting a little: how many people visited your booking page last week but didn't complete a booking? If you don't know the answer, you're not alone—most dropzone booking systems don't even track this.

But here's why it matters. E-commerce research consistently shows that 60-80% of online purchases are abandoned before completion. Think someone is seriously browsing for a skydiving package, selecting a date, entering their info, getting all the way to the payment screen... and then disappearing. Maybe their phone rang. Maybe they wanted to check with their partner first. Maybe they hit a card decline and got frustrated.

In most industries, companies obsess over these abandoned carts because the revenue potential is massive. These aren't casual browsers—these are high-intent customers who were literally seconds away from paying you $250-$500. And most dropzone booking systems just... let them disappear into the void.

Why? Because most platforms don't even track the abandonment event. They're blind until a payment completes and the payment processor sends a webhook. Everything before that moment doesn't exist as far as the system is concerned.

Let's do some math. Say you're completing 50 tandem bookings per week through your online system. If the industry-standard 60% abandonment rate holds, that means another 75 people started but didn't finish. At a $300 average booking value, that's $22,500 per week in abandoned bookings—over $100,000 per month in potential revenue that you didn't even know existed.

Now, you're not going to recover all of those. But what if you recovered just 10%? That's $10,000+ per month in incremental revenue. What if you hit 15-20%, which is totally achievable with automated cart recovery emails sent at the right time? Now you're talking about real money—$15,000 to $20,000+ monthly that requires zero additional ad spend because these customers already found you.

This is why event tracking and automated follow-up isn't a nice-to-have feature—it's fundamental revenue infrastructure. When we built EZ DZ, this was one of the first systems I insisted on getting right. Every meaningful action on the booking page fires a tracked event, so we know exactly when someone abandons. Then 30 minutes later, they get a friendly reminder email with a one-click link to complete their booking.

The timing matters. Send it too fast (5 minutes) and you're pushy. Wait too long (2+ hours) and they've mentally moved on. Thirty minutes is the sweet spot where they've resolved whatever caused the interruption but haven't context-switched to something else entirely.

Let's zoom out from cart recovery for a moment and talk about the bigger picture: how you communicate with customers throughout their entire journey. Because the dropzones that consistently fill loads aren't the ones with the biggest marketing budgets or the lowest prices. They're the ones who make customers feel taken care of at every step.

Think about the last time you booked something significant online—a vacation rental, concert tickets, a flight. What happened immediately after you paid? You got a confirmation email, right? With all your details, a summary of what you bought, and clear next steps. That instant confirmation isn't just transactional—it's psychological. It closes the 'commitment gap' that opens up the moment someone hands over their credit card.

Now think about your tandem booking flow. Someone just committed $300+ to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Are they getting a professional confirmation email within seconds? Or are they staring at a generic payment receipt from Stripe, wondering if their booking actually went through and what happens next?

This might seem like a small detail, but small details compound. Every customer interaction either builds confidence or creates friction. A professional confirmation email builds confidence. Radio silence creates friction and increases the likelihood they'll no-show or call with anxious questions.

Here are the critical communication touchpoints every dropzone should have automated:

• **Instant booking confirmation:** Sent immediately upon payment completion with all booking details, what to expect, and next steps
• **Abandoned cart recovery:** Sent 30 minutes after someone starts but doesn't complete a booking, with a direct link to finish payment
• **Day-before reminder:** Sent 24 hours before jump time at 9am (when people are planning their day) with logistics, what to wear, what to bring, and arrival time
• **Post-jump review request:** Sent 1 hour after the load lands, while the adrenaline is still fresh and they're eager to share their experience

Notice what's missing from that list? Anything manual. If you're relying on someone to remember to send these emails, they won't get sent consistently. People get busy. Manifest gets hectic. Weather holds throw off timing. Automation solves this by triggering the right message at the right time based on customer actions, not based on someone remembering.

You could have perfect follow-up systems and still lose bookings if your actual booking page is confusing, slow, or frustrating to use. I'm constantly amazed by how many dropzones invest in beautiful websites and marketing but then bolt on clunky booking widgets that look like they're from 2008.

When I was testing booking flows during EZ DZ development, I found myself abandoning bookings even when I genuinely wanted to complete them—not because of price, but because the experience was painful. Multi-step forms that don't save progress. Mobile layouts that don't work properly. Confusing package options with no clear descriptions. Payment screens that look sketchy or untrustworthy.

Every point of friction costs you conversions. Think of your booking flow like a leaky funnel: every confusing step, every extra click, every moment of uncertainty is a hole where potential revenue drains out.

Here's what a friction-free booking experience should include:

• **Mobile-first design:** Most people are booking from phones. If your booking page doesn't work flawlessly on mobile, you're losing bookings every single day
• **Clear package descriptions:** No industry jargon, no confusing options, just straightforward explanations of what's included and how much it costs
• **Calendar integration:** Let customers see available slots and pick a time that works for them without having to call or email
• **Progress saving:** If someone gets interrupted halfway through, they should be able to come back and pick up where they left off
• **Trust signals:** Clear requirement policies, use trusted payments like Apple and Google Pay, and professional design all reduce hesitation
• **Single-page checkout:** The fewer steps between 'I want to book' and 'booking confirmed,' the better

I've seen businesses in other industries boost their conversion rates by 20-30% just by cleaning up their booking/checkout flow. That's not spending more on marketing, that's getting more value from the traffic you already have. If you're driving 1,000 people to your booking page each month and converting 5%, improving that to 7% means 20 additional bookings. At $300 each, that's $6,000 per month with zero additional ad spend.

We've already talked about automated email workflows for immediate confirmations and cart recovery, but let's go deeper on the post-booking follow-up system—because this is where most dropzones completely drop the ball.

Here's a typical scenario: Someone books a tandem for three weeks out. They get a confirmation email (if they're lucky). Then... radio silence. They show up the morning of, having forgotten half the details, not sure what to expect, maybe wearing jeans and the wrong shoes because nobody reminded them.

Or worse: they don't show up at all. You've held a slot, scheduled a TI, built them into the load sheet, and they just ghost. No call, no text, nothing. That no-show just cost you $250-$500 in lost revenue, wasted a staff member's time, and created a hole in your manifest that you now have to fill.

The day-before reminder email solves this. Research across industries shows that simple reminder messages reduce no-show rates by 15-25%. For dropzones specifically, this isn't just about filling that one slot—it's about better operations overall. Fewer no-shows mean more predictable scheduling, better aircraft utilization, less wasted TI time, and consistently full loads.

But the timing and content matter. Don't just send a generic 'don't forget your appointment tomorrow' email at midnight. Send it at 9am the day before, when people are drinking coffee and planning their next day. Include everything they need to know: what time to arrive, what to wear, what to bring, where to park, what to expect. Answer the common questions preemptively (EZDZ has automations ready to go for this).

When you reduce no-shows by 20%, you're not just recovering that immediate revenue—you're running a tighter, more efficient operation that can handle higher volume during peak times.

Let's talk about something that doesn't show immediate results but compounds massively over time: your online presence, specifically your Google reviews and social proof.

When someone searches 'skydiving near me,' what do they see? A 4.8-star Google rating with 500+ reviews signals trust instantly. A 4.1-star rating with 47 reviews doesn't. Those extra reviews and that higher rating don't just make you look better—they fundamentally change your economics.

Here's why: Google's search algorithm favors businesses with more recent, higher-quality reviews. That means better organic rankings, which means more free traffic. When you do run paid ads, a strong review profile dramatically improves your conversion rate, which lowers your cost per acquisition. And existing customers who check you out after hearing about you from a friend are way more likely to book when they see glowing reviews.

But here's the problem: most dropzones don't systematically ask for reviews. They might mention it to especially happy customers, or put a sign in the hangar, but there's no consistent system. That means they're leaving social proof on the table.

The fix is simple: automate your review requests and time them perfectly. Remember earlier when I mentioned sending review requests 1 hour after the load lands? That timing is critical because that's when customers are still buzzing from the experience, sitting in their cars texting friends about what they just did, and emotionally primed to write something positive.

Wait until they get home and life takes over—work emails, kids, dinner prep, errands—and asking for a review becomes a chore instead of an outlet for excitement. But catch them in that one-hour window and they *want* to talk about their jump. Your email just gives them the perfect outlet.

Let's do some math on the compounding value of reviews. If you're doing 50 tandems per week and you get 30% of customers to leave reviews (which is totally achievable with well-timed requests), that's 15 new reviews weekly. Over a 20-week season, that's 300 reviews. Those 300 reviews improve your organic search rankings, reduce your paid ad costs, increase your conversion rate, and make word-of-mouth referrals more likely to convert.

The crazy part? This costs you literally nothing. You're just asking at the right moment in an automated, consistent way.

Everything we've talked about so far has been focused on maximizing the value of the traffic and customers you already have: recovering abandoned bookings, reducing no-shows, collecting reviews, improving your booking flow. These should be your foundation because they're high-ROI and mostly cost-neutral.

But let's talk about when it makes sense to spend money on acquiring new customers through paid marketing—and more importantly, how to not light your budget on fire.

First, the brutal truth: if your booking flow is broken, your follow-up system is nonexistent, and you're not tracking abandonment, spending money on ads is pouring water into a leaky bucket. You'll drive more traffic, sure, but you'll lose most of it the same way you're losing your current traffic. Fix the leaks first.

Once your fundamentals are solid, paid marketing can be a powerful accelerator. Here's what actually works for dropzones:

**Google Ads for high-intent searches:** When someone searches 'tandem skydiving [your city],' that's a high-intent customer actively looking to book. A well-optimized Google Ads campaign can profitably capture these searches. The key is tight geographic targeting, negative keywords to filter out job seekers and low-intent searches, and conversion tracking so you actually know what's working.

**Facebook/Instagram for brand awareness and retargeting:** Social ads work differently than search ads. Someone scrolling Instagram isn't necessarily looking to book a tandem right now, but a compelling video of a jump can plant the seed. Where social ads really shine is retargeting: showing ads to people who visited your booking page but didn't complete. Since you know they're already interested, retargeting conversion rates are typically 5-10x higher than cold traffic.

**Strategic promotions for off-peak times:** Notice I said 'strategic,' not 'desperate.' If you know weekdays or shoulder season months are consistently slower, running targeted promotions to fill those slots can make sense. The key is positioning it as special pricing for specific times, not training your market to wait for constant discounts.

But here's what matters more than which platform you use: can you actually track your ROI? If you can't tell whether a $1,000 ad spend generated $3,000 in bookings or $500 in bookings, you're gambling, not marketing.

This is why proper analytics and conversion tracking is non-negotiable. You need to know not just how many people clicked your ad, but how many actually booked, what they spent, and whether they showed up. Google Analytics can tell you some of this, but you really need an integrated system that tracks the full customer journey from ad click to completed jump.

When we built EZ DZ, we integrated Rybbit tracking from day one specifically because most dropzone software treats analytics as an afterthought. Our system tracks conversion data across the entire journey: which marketing channels drive bookings, where customers drop off in the funnel, which packages convert best, even time-of-day booking patterns.

This level of visibility lets you make smart decisions about ad spend. You can see that Facebook ads are driving traffic but Google Ads are driving bookings, or that weekend promotions work but weekday ones don't, or that video packages have a 40% attachment rate when offered during checkout but only 15% when offered after booking.

Here's what I want you to understand: none of these strategies exist in isolation. They compound. When you recover abandoned bookings, you're getting more value from your existing marketing spend. When you reduce no-shows with reminder emails, you're running more efficient operations. When you collect more reviews, your organic rankings improve and your paid ads perform better. When you improve your booking flow, every marketing dollar goes further.

Let's walk through a realistic scenario showing how these changes compound over a season.

**Starting point:** You're doing 50 completed tandem bookings per week at $300 average. That's $15,000 weekly, or $300,000 over a 20-week season.

**Add abandoned cart recovery:** With 60% abandonment rate (industry standard), you're actually seeing 125 booking attempts per week but only completing 50. You implement automated cart recovery emails 30 minutes after abandonment. At a conservative 12% recovery rate, you recapture 9 additional bookings weekly. That's $2,700/week, or $54,000 over the season.

**Reduce no-shows:** Your current no-show rate is 15% (pretty typical without reminder systems). By implementing day-before reminder emails, you cut that to 8%. That's recovering 7 percentage points across your now-59 weekly bookings, meaning 4 additional completed jumps per week. That's $1,200/week, or $24,000 over the season.

**Improve booking flow conversion:** Your current booking page converts at 5% (50 bookings from 1,000 visitors weekly). You clean up the mobile experience, simplify package options, and add trust signals. Conversion improves to 6.5%. With the same 1,000 weekly visitors, you're now getting 65 bookings instead of 50. That's 15 additional bookings weekly at $300, or $4,500/week—$90,000 over the season.

**Build social proof:** You implement automated review requests sent 1 hour after landing. Over the season, you accumulate 300+ new reviews. This improves your Google rankings, bringing an extra 100 organic visitors monthly (that's 2,000 over the season). At your improved 6.5% conversion rate, that's 130 additional organic bookings worth $39,000. Plus, your improved review profile increases your paid ad conversion rate by 20%, effectively making every ad dollar work 20% harder.

**Total incremental revenue from these changes:** $54,000 (cart recovery) + $24,000 (no-show reduction) + $90,000 (improved conversion) + $39,000 (organic growth from reviews) = $207,000 additional revenue in a single season.

And here's the kicker: the net cost of implementing these systems with EZ DZ can be zero if you pass platform fees to customers (just like every other industry does with booking fees). You're generating $207,000 in incremental revenue at essentially no cost.

Compare that to the discounting approach: if you dropped your tandem price from $300 to $250 to drive volume, you'd need to book 828 additional tandems just to generate the same $207,000 in revenue (828 × $250 = $207,000). That's a 65% increase in volume—meaning you'd have to go from 1,000 tandems per season to 1,828. That requires massive additional ad spend, more staff, more aircraft capacity, and you're still making less margin per jump.

The math is clear: optimizing your systems beats discounting every single time.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by everything in this article, here's the good news: you don't have to implement everything at once. Start with the highest-leverage opportunities first.

**Week 1: Start tracking abandonment.** Before you can recover abandoned bookings, you need to know they're happening. If your current booking system doesn't track this (most don't), that's your first priority. You can't fix what you can't measure.

**Week 2-3: Implement automated email workflows.** Set up instant confirmations, 30-minute cart recovery emails, day-before reminders, and post-jump review requests. If your current platform doesn't support this level of automation, it's time to seriously evaluate alternatives.

**Week 4: Audit your booking flow.** Go through your booking process on mobile like a customer would. Note every point of confusion, every extra click, every moment of uncertainty. Then fix them one by one.

**Ongoing: Track your numbers.** Once you've implemented these systems, actually measure the results. How many abandoned bookings are you recovering? What's your no-show rate? How's your conversion rate trending? This data tells you what's working and where to focus next.

The dropzones that consistently fill loads in any economic environment aren't doing anything magical. They're just excellent at the fundamentals: clear communication, frictionless booking, systematic follow-up, and relentless optimization. They make it easy for customers to book, easy to show up prepared, and easy to share their experience.

You don't need to slash your prices to compete. You need to build systems that work while you sleep.