Peter Kollar is the owner and chief pilot at Balloon Adventures Emirates. Here Peter shares his Cashless Pioneers story with MasterCard and how online payments is an essential for attracting customers from around the world.
Originally from New Zealand, I am the owner and Chief Pilot of Balloon Adventures Emirates. I spend my winters flying balloons in Dubai, and in the summer time I escape the desert heat and head to Umbria to take to the Italian skies.
While ballooning is my full time profession and I have completed more than 3,000 flights, my true passion is meeting and entertaining people from all over the world.
Setting up a ballooning company in the UAE has been a fascinating experience full of ups and downs – if you’ll pardon the pun! After 10 years of flying in different areas across the UAE, we have now settled in a beautiful area next to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, with pristine dunes and wandering wild animals as far as the eye can see.
Our customers can use credit or debit cards to pay for their flights, with the majority choosing to pay online in advance, rather than at the site. We like to give our customers a seamless experience from start to finish, so the ability to sort out payments before arrival makes it much easier for us to get off the ground. As a lot of our visitors come from outside the UAE, it is absolutely essential that we are flexible when it comes to accepting different payment methods.
I recommend that all small businesses accept electronic and online payments, as I believe that cash payments will become obsolete in the near future. From my own experience, going cashless has undoubtedly taken my business to new heights!
