AirBnb for Divers?

[chadnaylor]

Hey all,

A couple of my buddies and I have been working on a website for finding/booking dives, gear rentals, and cert classes around the world. The core idea is to make it much easier for divers to go diving when they're abroad or in a new city, while bringing dive shops free marketing and more business.

We're just about ready to launch our beta, and we just went live with a website blurb about the concept.

The concept site can be found at: deepadventures.io

I'd love to hear thoughts and criticisms on the concept if you have a second to check it out. Would you use something like this? Would your shop? Would it help new divers find what they want?

Thanks in advance!
Chad

 

[HantsDiver]

I think you are too late to the party. Tripadvisor covers this already.

I think you have zero percent chance of businesses letting you take a 5% booking fee - they know about seo and customers will use google.

Sorry if that's negative.

 

[chadnaylor]

Thanks for the feedback, Hants! Negative thoughts are definitely welcome, especially since friends probably don't want to hurt our feelings when we bring the idea up to them.

There are a few sites out there that offer dive bookings, but it seems like diving is a minor side thing for them. We're thinking divers will enjoy having a community that caters just to scuba. Kind of like how craigslist does cars, but autotrader and dupont are still quite successful.

As far as the fee goes, margins on diving are small, but not that small. If we're bringing in a bunch of extra business for shops, is it really an unreasonable ask?

 

[Kevo88]

I'm not a dive professional, or in the industry at all, so I can't comment on that end. But as a consumer, I'd at least give it a try out. If it is well organized, convienent, and is updated regularly by the shops, I could see it saving some phone calls find find a spot on a boat.

One suggestion of make would be to include a flash dives or flash sales area or notification system for an app. Say, someone dropped out of a dive, spot opened up, boat leaves in an hour, half price type thing. I travel a ton for work, and don't always have solid starting and ending hours while I'm out. But if I had finished working for the day and got a quick ping that I could grab an afternoon dive on the cheap, gear in the boat waiting, I'd probably scoop it up.

 

[chadnaylor]

Ooh, good ideas! Thanks...will have to think about how these could be integrated

 

[KeithG]

So why would I use you? What are my benefits? Whom ever i am!

My obtuse point is that you likely need to be very clear (to yourself) about where the money comes from. How are you going to get paid? (i do not need to know this, you do).

As a seasoned vacation diver, I know where I want to go. Can you get me a better deal?

 

[EricTheDood]

Seems like a good concept. Most dive ops have terrible websites. Some are functional, many aren't, none are aesthetically pleasing.

The 5% booking fee may kill it for you in the early stages. If participating dive ops mark up their prices on your site to cover the booking fee, customers may likely use your site as a search database before going directly to the dive op's site.

 

[Lorenzoid]

A potential problem is market share. If you aren't the size of Airbnb--that is, a virtual monopoly--then not every dive shop is going to be signed up. If I want to visit a certain location but I'm not certain the service covers all of the dive shops, etc., in that location, I'm not going to bother with it--I'm going to use Google and make inquiries as I always have. But starting small is the only way to have a chance at getting big. Good luck.

 

[chadnaylor]

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

@giffenk I'm hoping that the big benefit is being able to find and book dives easily in one place. It probably wouldn't help seasoned regular divers like yourself as much, but new divers and casual divers who don't have favorite spots might be able to benefit from not having to do a bunch of research to find their dives. Do you think this might be the case?

@EricTheDood Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, we're worried about the booking fee as well. Hopefully the convenience of not having to wade through individual dive shop sites brings enough value to cover it.

@Lorenzoid Yeah, once we've validated the concept in a few areas we'll have to work out butts off to expand quickly.

 

[northernone]

The idea is good, the rollout may be impossible. I can think of a few dozen attempts over the last couple years. Apps, sites etc. None got big enough to be any practical use to the end user (me) and I always know I can find a better deal on my own.
Cameron