Running Dive Travel

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If you run it as a legit “club”, you enjoy a lot of protections. Your profit is thus also very limited, basically getting free trips, but I know very few people who have made a dime trying to do this as a business. Once you get established, FAM trips might take you all over the world in an effort to get you to book trips or write articles. I always looked at that as my real paycheck, traveling to crazy cool places (back then) for nothing. Now they cost modest fees, usually for the airfares who are very tight.

Most of the big travel players are adjuncts to large travel agencies, spawned in the day where you could still make $3.25 for booking the air. Those days are gone. Unless it’s pure exotica, I just tell participants the airport they need to get to and how to get to the dive-op. You’re on your own for air, and that’s how most want it. You can give the truly internet ignorant some help or get in bed with a travel agent if they still exist, i dunno.

if your LDS isn’t running week long travel, they might let you have that franchise. But- Most shops use trips as a way to keep the Instructor busy doing certs in warm water. They get their land/dive pkg for free (as you still can get 1/1o comps) but since airfare isn’t your booking, that can chip into his costs. Exotic travel, to non common Caribbean and beyond, you might like a travel agent to come up with an air package, also one that allows some carrier choice to the US gateway city from East TN in your case. There you can get some help with the trip leaders airfare.

It’s actually easier to sell destinations beyond Cozumel, Cayman, Nassau and Caribbean liveaboards because any monkey can book their own trip. You start talking Red Sea or Galapagos, Philippines, people get a little less sure of DIY. But, your prior experience level With a destination comes into play.

Make your trips special in some way. Everybody gets a printed t-shirt or _____. People like that kind of stuff and they will tell their friends.

How do you market? As above, word of mouth. Not easy but patience, a perfect product, that’ll do it. Flyers in every LDS you can drive to who will let you post them. You have a very niche audience. Or a full page regional insertion in whatever dive magazine still exists (if you have buckets of money), maybe a TOS conforming mention in your local forum here on SB.

I would not mention that you are/were a DM or offer to act in that capacity. If you are current and that means something in your life, retain the insurance, but refer to the previous sentence. Cut the patches off your stuff. Stick with your logged dive count and your dive travel experience list.

If you’re looking for income, I’d bake brownies and sell them next to the pot shops...unless the Girl Scouts got there first.
I hope this posts right as a reply - like I said I am new at this and clicking Post Reply basically opened your post. That said a few questions - What is a FAM trip? Ans why would you recommend I not mention being a DM? With the COVID-19 quarantine I am now working on Asst. Instructor course but it is with an instructor that is quite a distance from me so I would not be working with him on a regular basis and will try to move on to Instructor after that, ending up more as an independent instructor than one with a regular shop affiliation.
Thanks for any further insight.
 
I have organized a few. I planned an Iceland trip last October but the main difference is I do it for just fun only and no profit. I basically get a commitment from the people and then book the stuff with those dates. Like for up there; there was a different tour everyday that the group did and I would contact the tour operator ahead of time and tell them how many people we have and what date we are looking at and most of the time they would give atleast a 10% discount if you had 10 or more people. The main thing is the people you have going with you you have to somewhat trust very closely and they have to trust you as well. I kind of knew what ballpark dollar figure the trip would turn out to be in total and I sent an email out before anything was booked with the ballpark dollar figures for each tour and said this would be the total cost if you wanted to do it all and requested a 20% deposit before anything was booked. I then basically created an Excel sheet to keep track of how much each person paid and what tour they booked and as soon as I booked a tour they were responsible for the rest of the money within 2 weeks. If not we had to call the tour operator and change our number but like I said that's where the trust has to come in. I only went with people that I have traveled with many times and no very well. But I will say it is a lot of work butThe trip turned out very nice and everyone was over the top impressed with the trip. I honestly can't even begin to count the number of hours I spent planning the trip.
So would you say the hours spent planning were worth the end result? Would that be a "selling point" if you will to promote having me do the planning for a group?
 
I appreciate all the great response from this group. I hope everyone is doing well during this COVID-19 time which seems to have killed dive travel - as well as all other travel - for the moment. I am taking this time to examine all the options for when things open up and was wondering if there are any independent instructors out there that don't work for a specific dive shop and do dive travel for their students in groups - or lead trips for other groups just for the travel.
 
What is a FAM trip?

In the old days a FAM trip was a familiarization trip put on by airlines, resorts and even governments to promote travel to their destinations. They were offered free or for just a few dollars and travel professionals (i.e. travel agents) were on the invite list. They wanted you to go home and sell their destination/resort
... Usually just a few days, but in 1985 I went on a three week FAM trip safari in South Africa, Botswanna, Zambia, etc... for a total price of $100 including first class airfare from Los Angeles. :) Those were the days! Went to London for 3 days, Grand Cayman diving 3 days (twice)....
 
So would you say the hours spent planning were worth the end result? Would that be a "selling point" if you will to promote having me do the planning for a group?

First I was not in it for profit at all and made no profit. Everyone wanted the trip to be enjoyable and on that particular trip it was well worth the hours planning it in advance because at that location you could not go there with not some sort of itinerary. If you just left it up to everyone to plan their own thing once they got there we would not have been able to do 75% of the activities that we did because they were sold out. As far as it being a selling point, again I don't know I didn't do it for profit but if someone came to me and asked me if I wanted to go on a trip or was interested I would say okay well what are you going to do there? If you have some kind of idea it makes the person in my opinion more comfortable about the trip because they know what they're getting into.
 
Hi. I've been a divemaster since 2003. TOok a break a few years ago because of bad knees but now that I have new ones I'm back at it. Years ago when ProDive was still in business someone there said he thought I'd be really good running dive trips and travel. At the time I was working so had little time for anything like that. Now I'm semi-retired and wondering if it might be something that would work for me. Since I like to dive - and travel (and eat, gotta do that on the trips).

But, I have no idea where to really start. I have a couple trips each year for a small group of 4-5 to the Cooper River in South Carolina to look for Meg teeth but haven't really got any idea what else is wanted - or needed - out there in the Scuba world.

So, if you have any experience in this area and would be willing to share - even if it's to tell me what NOT to do, I would appreciate any feedback.

Things like do I need to be affiliated with a travel agent or dive shop. Do I need to have a relationship with shops in the locations where I might want to take a group and, most importantly, how to find, and vet, people for those trips.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Liz,

I have been doing this for 10 years now. Send me an email off forum and I'll be glad to tell you all I know. Should take about 2 minutes...hahahahahh

greg.carter@liquidddivingadventures.com

Best regards,

Greg
 
In the old days a FAM trip was a familiarization trip put on by airlines, resorts and even governments to promote travel to their destinations. They were offered free or for just a few dollars and travel professionals (i.e. travel agents) were on the invite list. They wanted you to go home and sell their destination/resort
... Usually just a few days, but in 1985 I went on a three week FAM trip safari in South Africa, Botswanna, Zambia, etc... for a total price of $100 including first class airfare from Los Angeles. :) Those were the days! Went to London for 3 days, Grand Cayman diving 3 days (twice)....
Thanks for the definition. For some reason I thought it was an abbreviation for Family - and I don't really want to spend much time with them LOL I dive because fish don't talk
 
First I was not in it for profit at all and made no profit. Everyone wanted the trip to be enjoyable and on that particular trip it was well worth the hours planning it in advance because at that location you could not go there with not some sort of itinerary. If you just left it up to everyone to plan their own thing once they got there we would not have been able to do 75% of the activities that we did because they were sold out. As far as it being a selling point, again I don't know I didn't do it for profit but if someone came to me and asked me if I wanted to go on a trip or was interested I would say okay well what are you going to do there? If you have some kind of idea it makes the person in my opinion more comfortable about the trip because they know what they're getting into.
Thanks for that info , never thought about activities being sold out if a group just gathered at a site.
 
Hi Liz,

I have been doing this for 10 years now. Send me an email off forum and I'll be glad to tell you all I know. Should take about 2 minutes...hahahahahh

greg.carter@liquidddivingadventures.com

Best regards,

Greg
I tried - it bounced
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

greg.carter@liquidddivingadventures.com
Unrouteable address
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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