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You know... With a hundred different streaming services nowadays (it's out of control), maybe one of them could!!!

Those are 2 loaded questions - a bit much on Christmas eve, maybe, but here's a take on it. We train a bunch of new divers every year. About 150K Americans become newly certified divers every year (pre-pandemic). But the participation rate steadily drops. For instance, pre-pandemic, 237K...

Correct! The pandemic gave a boost to local diving - "local" in a broad sense. Since a lot of typical dive destination countries had their border closed (and a bunch of other reasons like the uncertainty that the trip would really happen and if it was canceled, if you would get a refund, etc.)...

Thanks for sharing your experience! Very interesting & valuable! Happy Holidays!

I'm working on it! There are hints in the numerous Scubanomics articles I wrote. But for now... I need to "start" Christmas shopping! :O

Yes! I like it too! Another way would be to offer coaching sessions. When my kids learned to ski, we paid per hour or per session; I'm not sure. They had fun on the little hill until they were ready to go up the chairlift. We don't know how much we spent nor how many sessions it took. We just...

That'd be fun!!! That being said, I am not sure that the visibility of scuba diving is such an issue. Every time we discuss the fact that scuba diving participation is shrinking, we blame the lack of Cousteau or Sea Hunt on TV. Yet, there are plenty of outdoor activities booming without that...

We know all of that. I even said so. And I've owned/managed plenty of dive businesses to know the relationship with training agencies and dive gear manufacturer brands. Probably everybody here knows it. The problem remains that there is no industry-wide brand that a dive consumer (especially a...

I fully agree with the dive industry's need for improved customer service. In fact, it's crucial and was badly needed about 30 years ago. The lack of leadership and vision is at the top. The 3 dive centers that you mentioned with horrible customer service... They are affiliated with a training...

Right. And what do you do after a while? Sitting on the bow and working on catching skin cancer gets old pretty quickly. BLU3 launched a small one-person battery-operated surface-supplied air system recently and their sales growth mainly came from putting their products in boating stores not...

True. And every time we discuss how scuba diving is declining, we hear the argument of cost. Yet, many other expensive outdoor activities are growing. Boating, for instance, is more expensive than scuba, and yet, it was booming during the pandemic. "2020 has been an unprecedented year with...

Thanks so much @NothingClever ! I do it as a sideline because when I was managing dive businesses on a full-time basis, I couldn't understand why this so-called "industry" had no data. In every other industry in which I've worked, we had more data than we could process. Normally, market data...

Right. However, there's a bigger story than the pandemic, here. In 2019, before we even heard of COVID-19, participation in scuba diving by Americans was already down with a 5-year average annual growth of -2.8% (a decline of 2.8% annually on average). Source: SFIA (and I wrote about it...

A quick look at the USA and the Asia-Pacific region. 1) USA In the 3rd quarter of this year, the number of entry-level scuba diving certifications issued to Americans is down from last year (-4.8%) and down from pre-pandemic levels (-9.8%). So far, there is no “post-pandemic comeback” for the...

Right on!! I was just too lazy to dig out the proper terms...

You can buy an insurance policy that covers you for your past actions while you are no longer teaching. It's less expensive than a full coverage liability insurance. The same applies to a dive center. I purchased such a coverage once after I had sold the assets of a dive center but the...

It depends on the insurance policy you have. I remember at one point having seen a professional liability offering that covered you for the time the course (or whatever you are blamed for) happened. Switching from one type to the other would leave you uninsured in some cases. But I believe what...

Just catching up on ScubaBoard and reading your Sept. 12 post now... Sorry! Only a handful of training agencies are in the RSTC. The vast majority of them are not. It was created to provide the illusion of a self-governing, responsible dive industry. "We are following industry standards." But...

Good News in Q3 similar to Q2: Scuba Diving Certifications in The First 9 Months of 2021

The feedback I got, here, is outstanding. Many very valid points.