Local rates in the old days could be covered by a driving license now you need a local health insurance card. I was blown away when I was asked for one last year by a new shop girl who didn’t recognize us. Its a place where we regularly go shore diving and it was three local DMs. However understood the problem and we all paid full rates as all we had were c-cards and one driving license (no wallets). Locals don’t have the confirmation rights as visitors, take care of getting to and from and pretty much do everything with their gear and if other guests book can lose their spot on the boat last minute. They also tip the guys real well as they know how tight that is and to show their appreciation for the local rate. Many of the boats ops now are also asking for health insurance cards. There are too many folks here that have condos they visit once or twice a year and while it would be nice to extend the discount we would all go out of business. In addition locals send us new business regularly so it all works out. Sorry should clarify this is how it works in Grand Cayman. And actually while we would always rather have a full boat, sending a boat out without empty seats does have benefits. It gives the DM's a bit of a break, gives the guy on surface watch time to really look over the boat and gear that is left on it and mean that the time involved in waking the boat up and putting it to bed is much faster. Everyone likes a day when they get a little bit of free time. Can't speak about the situation in Coz, but the margins here are very tight. Many of the smaller ops while still having their old "name" have been bought up by one guy. Anyone here who is licensed (there really are no pirates) cannot afford not to charge going rates. The overall costs of insurance (both boat/business and health), work permits, T&B License and even CITA costs are just too high -- the salary and gas are the least of the problem.
Generally true, although Red Sail runs a weekly resident-only dive - no bumping.
Those operators who do offer resident rates (and I dive with several of them on GC) vary in how they run their deals, and some just give a good rate to "local" folks they know will dive a lot with them regardless of their official "resident" status. The ops should actually rebrand it as stand-by rates, if that's what they are, and not worry so much about residency. There is a LOT of (practical, useful) economic research on dynamic pricing that the dive ops could benefit from (e.g., this is how airlines and cruise ships price their seats/slots). If you want/need to know you have an iron-clad but refundable reservation, then you pay full price. You pay something less if you can fully commit (no refund for cancellation) or can show up at short notice - usually a day (stand-by) or are OK being bumped. If the boat (airplane, cruise ship) is going out anyway, then anything a dive op can get above the very low variable cost of an additional passenger is profit. Once the boat leaves the dock, each empty seat is worth 0. If I were me (and occasionally I am) I would want a list of "locals" (be they long-stay tourists, condo owners who come down for only a few weeks or months, drivers license holders, citizens, whatever) that I could contact whenever a boat was going out less than full. Since pretty much only non-tourist types could dive under these conditions, it really does not make a difference what you actually call them. There are a couple of ops on GC that I have done this with (regardless of my legal residency status). My upside is a great rate. My downside is that I don't get to plan when I go out, and I may get bumped at the last minute for a full-pay. I am totally OK with that. And on Sundays I know I can go with Red Sail. The dive op's upside is that whatever they get from me is almost totally profit. And I'm a relatively low-maintenance, good-tipping customer, so I guess that helps - at least they keep letting me come back.
In a former life I started/ran a couple of companies that price-tiered the assets we sold. For example, one was a leasing company. When a customer leased an asset from us, we cover the fixed and variable costs in the base lease. If we could get them to add additional assets, our increased costs were mostly variable or step, so we could lower the price to entice customers to add assets yet make an even greater profit. This is similar to a volume discount, something we are all familiar with. Everyone wins. This also underlies the "add one" sales campaigns that companies in almost any industry use ("Do you want to supersize that?" I.e., pay way more for a bigger product than the almost nothing additional it costs to provide it). Financially it always make sense to entice sales at a lower cost if your fixed are already covered, assuming the increase in volume does not trigger an increase in fixed costs (e.g.,you would not buy another boat if you consistently had more than a boatfull of only local-discount customers).
So....If you can't find a published "local" rate, approach a dive op and explain that you plan to do lots of dives with them (I try to go at least twice per week) and see if they are open to the concept of calling you (or you calling them) the evening before to see if there is an opening, with the possibility of being bumped the morning of the dive, and offer to pay something like half price, explaining that this will be very profitable for them. If they are financially astute they might do it regardless of your legal residency status.
