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Get a real career going.Do not expect to make much in the dive industry unless you have alot of $$$$$$ to invest and take a chance with.
I have a real job that pays the bills and run dive trips on weekends and vacations. Here, it would just not pay to be full time since we are not a viable, 12-month draw.
Or in other words, with prices the way they are you would need to find .... and be able to accomodate .... roughly 12000-15000 clients a year consistently or in terms of day to day running of the business you would have an average of 40 clients under the roof on any given day, 365 days a year for 10 years.
Assuming the normal "net" rate is for dive shops in Thailand is about 10% (which I would expect in a market as saturated as Thailand is) and you took 1/2 of that for yourself and banked 1/2 to keep the shop alive in case of disaster then to reach your goal you're looking at netting roughly 700k per year which would require you to turn over about 7 million per year.
I'm curious as to the average number of clients per day per average dive op (a dive industry average, not a specific geographical market). This would give me a much clearer idea of what I'm up against; if the average is 5-6 and I'm counting on 40, obviously this is a longshot requiring something extraordinary.
Well China's market has an absurd amount of untapped potential, of course. Maybe your timing isn't too bad either and although it could be very interesting I don't think you can start now and retire at 35 if you're thinking about building something from the ground up. I also don't know if China has any locations that lend themselves to dive tourism. Vietnam is another market that hasn't been well developed yet but has, at least in terms of potential for dive tourism, some interesting prospects.Markets such as Thailand and the Philippines are obviously saturated; where are the under-served dive markets? While I was at Mermaid's in Thailand, someone mentioned that China had one course director for the entire country.
I am also a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese. What's your take on the prospects of developing this market?
Ive been in the industry for 8 years now and a business owner for 5. Its absolutely true what you hear...if you want to make a million in the dive industry, START WITH TWO!
1. You serve folks that travel to your for great diving. You have awesome sites and a boat to get them there.
2. You are a well-balanced training center that does training all the way up to pro. You have DM/Instructor candidates helping out with training at all levels and every class is a multi-level affair with instruction, assistant instruction, assistance, observation and evaluation. Best if you can have interns stay somewhere close at hand cheaply, or even included in their deal.