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"In fact, the opportunity pretty much opened itself up to us," says Henderson. "Nobody else was doing it, and we knew there was a demand for helicopter tours. We knew there was a demand in Manhattan. We knew there was a demand in Niagara and in Vancouver. And all of these cities have successful tour operations. So it seemed awfully strange that we didn't have a tour around something amazing like the core of the city. Toronto's beautiful from the air." She's also quick to point out that tourism is the city's number 2 industry – worth some $19.2 billion a year.
While the company started as a two-person operation, they needed to hire staff within a month or two of their launch. And thanks to the business' success, they were able to operate on profits from the early days. But the CYBF also helped with mentorship and support.
"When you're starting your own business there are all kinds of operational issues, things you don't expect at all if you haven't done it before. With their mentorship and their resources, it was like having a business partner – someone you could ask questions to." For example, their CYBF mentor helped them through the maze of regulations and procedures involved with hiring and managing human resources, a task which can be a full time job at times. "They pretty much set you up so you don't fall flat on your face in something like human resources or taxes," she says.
The Helicopter Company, which has its main base at the Toronto Island Airport, offers a variety of tours, which start as low as $85 for a ticket. Much of their business is prebooked by international visitors before they even arrive in Canada – their biggest market comes from the U.S. and the U.K., where flight paths over metropolitan areas are very restricted, and, in the case of Europe, single-engine aircraft are not even allowed over city centres. Toronto, by contrast, is "pristine". "There aren't too many air operations over the city, so there's plenty of room for us to be there." The tours fly over the city, but in the case of the CN Tower, they fly around it – at the level of the skypod, the top observation deck.
A section of the company's website is called "She said yes", and features photos of a few of the 800 or so couples who have popped the question while hovering over the city. You might think a helicopter a noisy, scary place to do this, but Henderson stresses how people scared off by television and action movies are amazed at how safe and comfortable helicopters are. This is, after all, something that's used for medevac and shooting movies.
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