Looking for Independent Instructors..about 15 to 20 of them

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I was thinking in terms of resort guests who were certified but without equipment that wanted to rent this system. I assume the umbilical floats so it is not being dragged over the coral.

That would be a different business model than we have developed for the Tooka. My personal feeling, is that a Hookah diver "should" be a skilled diver, that is good at freediving, and has zero issues if the unit on the surface gets run over by a drunk boater, or nailed by a 12 foot wake and air flow is interupted. Resort guests with certifications, should be checked out on a Hookah system quite well, prior to being allowed to rent one.
The Brownie concept has them each wearing a small bailout bottle on their weightbelt, with a necklace reg.....Certainly this is viable for the resort crowd--- If I am going to be on a Hooka though, I want to enjoy the maximum low drag, and will not want the bottle on my belt....And I am fine doing a free ascent without air from 30 feet or 100 feet.....as I said, we keep this shallow, so on a dive like Pauls reef with max at 30 or 35 feet, I am not going to see DCS issues as even relevent.

---------- Post added April 15th, 2012 at 11:17 AM ----------

Dan if Dema is not for it, it is more that they know that once they try it, that would be it and they would not adventure in scuba. Self contained underwater breathing apparatus is the experience, not a pull along snuba approach.

Also it is unfair to say that discover classes are a bad experience, I have taken a lot of people out diving, with only enough info to get them down to as deep as they are comfortable. Once a diver is passed breathing out of a regulator and breathes for a few minutes, then we kick to deeper water.

Dema also might feel that what I described is the problem, if people see how easy it actually is with even a short amount of diving knowledge, they will get there own equipment and go diving.
Voodoo...the problem is, the number of Resort class desiring divers is far too low, in the general population...and the number that goes on to become a diver has not become large enough to mean anything. We need to get a MUCH BIGGER CHUNK of the general population to want to try this....that means they must think that there is no work to do, not learning, etc...for them to try it the first time....This is the video game world, the instant gratification world...our "culture" has the masses in a different mental place than most of us here on scubaboard...Instructors assume everyone is willing to be taught skills to find out if they may like diving....I believe this is dead wrong. The masses don't want any learning or effort. Whatever chunk of this we can attract with the ease of a Tooka Experience, then suddenly there will be a change in this group, where many will decide they like the underwater world enough to be willing to take some lessons, and to do some "work". But they would need the baby step where no effort and no learning is required.
 
How much will an instructor make per $200/2 diver trip? With dive and refit I would guess your turn around time would be about 45 minutes. How many of these dives can you do in a day assuming there is a line of people waiting to try this? What percentage of the $200 is going toward your overhead? What is the breakdown of your overhead? How much goes to the resort, insurance, fills, equipment cost and any other overhead costs I may have left out?
 
How much will an instructor make per $200/2 diver trip? With dive and refit I would guess your turn around time would be about 45 minutes. How many of these dives can you do in a day assuming there is a line of people waiting to try this? What percentage of the $200 is going toward your overhead? What is the breakdown of your overhead? How much goes to the resort, insurance, fills, equipment cost and any other overhead costs I may have left out?
The way we have been doing it, is a 3 way split for the $200...Dive shop, Tooka biz, Instructor. You lose $20 off the $200 for the referral fee, which is what drives the guests to us.
At the BHB, it is easy to do 2, then 2, and then 2 divers in the tidal window. Thats instructor pay of $60 + $60 + $60 for less than 2 hours work ....

When we move this to the big marketing push, it would change to 25%... 4 ways, but this will mean the system would have grown enormously, and that it is supplying instructors as plug and play systems into resorts all over the Caribbean. This would mean we have more than 15 instructors, and that everyone is getting all the tooka guests they want :)
 
What type of insurance coverage do you have? What type of liability or consent forms are the people trying this signing?
 
What type of insurance coverage do you have? What type of liability or consent forms are the people trying this signing?

NASE Agency Tooka Instructor( with forms) and Willis Insurance. PADI is fine with this, as they do not have anything similar.

The Dive Shop that is part of this is a PADI 5 star IDC...it is Pura Vida Dive shop. All the instructors have to do is help gear up the guests, and then handle the tours. You need to cross over from PADI or Naui or whatever, to get the NASE Specialty Instructor rating...but this is not expensive or time consuming. The in-water time it involves with the Tooka though, is strict....each Tooka instructor candiate MUST be very strong in all required skills, and have very good proactive skills for seeing issues before they are problems. So not all applicants will be able to become Tooka Instructors...We plan on mandating that our instructors are to be MUCH BETTER, than the SNUBA instructors were/are. Our instructors also need to "like" the idea of providing 5 star level service to a high end hotel guest...the people that want everything done for them :) This is part of what Tooka is.
 
So the instructor needs to be able to dive Tooka and kiss toukass.
 
So the instructor needs to be able to dive Tooka and kiss toukass.
Tookass kissing is certainly part of 5 star resort service....But it pays well enough to allow you to do the kind of instruction and diving you want to, in the other hours of the day... :)
The reality is, that the huge chunk of the American population that has never been interested in all the work and bother required to try a Resort course or an OW cert, will be far more likely to get jazzed about diving, with this 5 star Resort approach...even if they are on more of a Beer than Champagne budget :)

As to cost.....there is a Jet Ski concession in Boynton Beach at the Marina....jet skis go out at about $100 per hour.....the clientelle is decidedly NOT 5 star resort in income.....yet this place rocks with a never ending flood of people all day long....it must be expensive for many, but it seems like fun to them, and they believe they know everything they need to, from the moment they hop on....there is no delayed gratification, beyond getting out of the no wake zone.'

Tooka appears fun and immediate, with nothing to learn...much like the jet skiing, but with a far better long term result for those who choose it ( meaning scuba is a great lifestyle change for many people...not so sure about jet skiing :)
 
Sounds like a good plan. I would be interested in hearing about your results once you are in full operation.
 
The more dive instructors I talk to, the more I hear about how well they have been able to do with the Resort Students they have taken out.

I think this is awesome, but it is not the point here....the point is, around 96 % of the US population does not want to put a scuba tank on their back, or to invest in any form of instruction to see if they might like diving.

Tooka is a way to go after this 96% of Americans ( or of the Global population) and to suddenly interest a big slice of these that have always ignored Resort Course Scuba or standard OW certifications.
Tooka sounds entirely different, to non-divers.
It does not matter that some of us could argue it is not all that different....what matters is the perception of the non-divers.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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