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A Lot of Hot Air
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Business New Haven
4/30/2001
By: Tammy Rachau
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BNH speaks with Robert Zirpolo, owner of and pilot for Berkshire Balloons in Southington.
What do you do at Berkshire Balloons?
We offer balloon flights for the public, as well as programs of flight instruction, hot-air balloon sales and service, repairs and inspections. We have been operating out of Southington for about 20 years. The flights are scheduled daily, in the morning and in the late afternoon up to a couple of hours before sunset. The flights last for about an hour and there is a Champagne celebration afterward. The flights originate in the Southington-Cheshire-Farmington area.
How did you get started with hot-air balloons?
I was living in the Portland, Maine area, and I met somebody who owned a balloon in 1980. I got involved at first in just kind of coming out and cooling for him, just to get involved in the sport. That summer I took flying lessons, and I got my license sometime in the fall. The next year I realized that I could possibly do this as a summertime job.
How did you come to own your own business in Connecticut?
Later that first fall I bought a balloon and started a business the next spring. That was in Maine. I worked up there for about a year, and then I came down to Connecticut because I found out that the market was a little better. I actually ended up in Connecticut because I was involved in a single-engine plane crash, as a passenger. Before that, I was living month-to-month in Portland.
When I was in this plane crash, I didn't really get that hurt, just kind of a little banged up. I was all of a sudden out of a job, I couldn't tend bar with the injury I had to my leg, so I moved to my friend's house in Connecticut for about a month. I had brought the balloon with me.
During that month we had flown a couple of times around the Southington area. Every time we would land, a parade of people would come up to help us pack the balloon up. Inevitably, the people would ask if I did the ballooning for hire around here. This happened so many times that I decided that maybe it would be a good idea if I did do it for hire around here, because it wasn't as busy a business in Maine. I started the business up in Connecticut around the spring of 1982. I have been flying for a little longer than that, but the business actually started here [then].
How do you get the word out about your company?
I can't tell you how many times I have had people say to me, 'I've been wanting to do this my whole life and never knew where to go to do it.' Then one day they just decided they were going to look into it, and they opened up their yellow pages, looked under the word balloon, and there I was. So, I do yellow-pages advertising. I do some advertising in travel publications.
One way that I'm lucky is that when we do the actual flight, we're very visible, and we attract a lot of people that way. I've had other people that have seen us land somewhere or see us fly by, and chase us down in their car to ask us questions. Of course, in this day and age I also have a tremendous amount of people who find me by doing a search and ending up at my Web site, www.berkshireballoons.com. I think the Internet has really helped the business.
Another way I'm packaging the trips differently is by offering different getaways trips, as opposed to just the daily flights. We have one called 'Bed, Breakfast and Ballooning.' I'm affiliated with an inn in Bristol called the Chimney Crest Manor, which is a 32-room stone Tudor mansion. It's not just putting somebody up in a hotel the night before their balloon flight. It's a gorgeous spot, and it really fits the bill.
Do you target a specific demographic?
People come for a wide variety of occasions, and often for no occasion at all - just because they have always wanted to do it. Probably 40 percent of our customers are from out of state and 60 percent are from Connecticut. There is also a wide age range. I've had passengers as young as ten up to people in their 70s or 80s.
Has the ballooning business changed during your years in the business?
In the entire decade of the 80s, people used to make reservations much further in advance than they do now. Now I find people don't plan for these things as far in advance as they used to. I also have a lot more people coming from out of the state and out of the country than I used to. The market seems to be pretty steady. Mostly it is a vacation thing. It is one of those things that people say they have wanted to do their entire lives. So, they are going to do it. It isn't really a question so much of cost.
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