There are many boats that visit the Great Barrier Reef for either day trips, local overnighters, or extended liveaboards to the Northern area's.
Too many to mention.
Most of the larger operators have their own offices in Cairns somewhere, however not all of the smaller ones have representation. Because of the vast number of brochures, different ages and requirements of each visitor, it is quite time consuming and confusing for visitors to visit each and every operator to find the match of price, availability, features to fit their requirements. Additionally rents are high in the Central Business District, so the smaller guys dont get the representation they need.
Finally, the customer, if they were to visit every operator, ( as happens at the Reef Fleet Terminal ) and have each operator tell them that THEY are the best, it can make a right decision more confusing also.
So me ..... for example started setting up Visitor Information offices in strategic positions around Cairns around 1990. Each operator happily and willingly asked me to represent their products as an " Independant ". We now have 3 Offices ( Cairns Waterfront, Abbott Street and Divers lane in Lake Street )and are now the oldest, and I consider the most knowledgable Independants for the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Every operator provides myself, Carmen and our staff with free trips to inspect the operations, and because of the volumes that we book through them, we are provided with seat allocations, great pricing and access to the Owners of every boat.
Having now been involved with Scubaboard for some time and happily sharing this knowledge with diving visitors to this region, we decided to offer a gift to this Forum of divers as a trial.
10 percent discount off Standby's, Standard and group rates to scubaboard members from May 1st to June 30.
This has not been published on any of our web sites. It has only recently been Introduced and as I say is a trial.
Cheers Andy
