Industry Outsider
Registered
Having been around the dive industry for 30+ years, I am always amazed at the power of Certifications Agency sway over dive centers and instructors. Despite the fact that X Agency etc actually do not teach people how to dive, or even train the instructors who teach people, they seem to have convinced the dive centers and instructors, they would not survive without them.
What frustrates me the most is that dive centers actually do 99% of all the advertising for training agencies. Visit any website, and they explain why they need to XXX Certfication course often making the certification logo bigger than there own business on it and there store.
The reality is the dive centres do 99% of the real training and X agency provides theory material that is verbose, boring and up 100% overpriced. ( Online Video and a storing a record of Certification won't cost more than a couple of dollars). Dive Centers and staff do the real training, take most of the risk, yet are ripped off by certification agencies. The worst part is that some dive centres will try and say they will only take X certification. Probably complain about the cost!!!!
Think about it. If you had a student complete do 8 hours on online training vs someone who just did the practical (pretty sure the instructor could tell them not to hold the breath), who would be the more competent diver?
I raise this because of it something that is obvious to me, but then I am not a dive instructor so I am not invested in any particular agency.
I challenge any dive center to take their agency off there website/store and see if the world would end. I can say from experience it won't. If X certification is such a powerful brand then let them prove their worth. My experience is that if you tell the customer they need X certification, then, sure enough, the customer will expect that.
Maybe I am crazy and want to hear some others thoughts.
IO
What frustrates me the most is that dive centers actually do 99% of all the advertising for training agencies. Visit any website, and they explain why they need to XXX Certfication course often making the certification logo bigger than there own business on it and there store.
The reality is the dive centres do 99% of the real training and X agency provides theory material that is verbose, boring and up 100% overpriced. ( Online Video and a storing a record of Certification won't cost more than a couple of dollars). Dive Centers and staff do the real training, take most of the risk, yet are ripped off by certification agencies. The worst part is that some dive centres will try and say they will only take X certification. Probably complain about the cost!!!!
Think about it. If you had a student complete do 8 hours on online training vs someone who just did the practical (pretty sure the instructor could tell them not to hold the breath), who would be the more competent diver?
I raise this because of it something that is obvious to me, but then I am not a dive instructor so I am not invested in any particular agency.
I challenge any dive center to take their agency off there website/store and see if the world would end. I can say from experience it won't. If X certification is such a powerful brand then let them prove their worth. My experience is that if you tell the customer they need X certification, then, sure enough, the customer will expect that.
Maybe I am crazy and want to hear some others thoughts.
IO