Dive Guide Cost Structure

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This discussion is missing basic micro economic considerations.

The cost of something has absolutely zero impact on the price that someone can charge. The price will impact the supply available. The price and quantity bought and sold in the market place will be at the intersection of the supply and demand curves in a free market.

Note: free market is not an unregulated one, it is a technical term describing a set of market conditions where there are a large number of buyers and sellers, low costs to enter or leave the market and perfect knowledge.

Dive guiding markets will tend to be a oligopolistic market, more buyers than sellers and more knowledge on the seller side than on the buyer. However anyone who has taken microeconomics 101 can draw the supply demand curves and explain how the pricing points are reached.

They end up at the place where the profit per seller is maximized.

Short answer, they charge per diver because they can and people will pay for it. Local peer pressure stops them from discounting prices to much for multiple divers and so most guides charge the same per diver with no regard for the number of divers.
 
Doing cenote dives as an open water diver with no cavern or cave cert is an ultimate “trust me” dive where you are placing your lives in the hands of a full cave certified guide. (The safety debate is another issue entirely.) Diving cenotes is a completely different animal from hiring a guide in an OW environment and the cost SHOULD be substantially higher by a factor of at least 2 or 3. My wife and I did 2 tank dives at Chac Mool in 2012. Great experience.
 
Doing cenote dives as an open water diver with no cavern or cave cert is an ultimate “trust me” dive where you are placing your lives in the hands of a full cave certified guide. (The safety debate is another issue entirely.) Diving cenotes is a completely different animal from hiring a guide in an OW environment and the cost SHOULD be substantially higher by a factor of at least 2 or 3. My wife and I did 2 tank dives at Chac Mool in 2012. Great experience.
I agree. I dove Chac Mool this past October and really liked it.

For that much money, compare the cost for getting an instructor to teach you a cavern class. It will cost more, no doubt, but you will really gain from that experience.
Agree with this also. I will be looking into it in consideration if it could work this trip.
 

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