PADI Five Star Dive Center/Resort rating?

[Uber]

[h=3]Apart from making sure these places sell enough courses - how does PADI audit this? I won't name names because that gets you sued on this forum.... but I have had enough "experience" of so-called 5 Star Centers to make me wonder......"actively promote underwater environmental awareness" and " scuba diver safety" would be a good example of where I have seen major failings..... I was told that if I want to complain to PADI I should only do so if I can point to an injury, otherwise to forget it. Of course "providing traveling scuba divers with memorable scuba diving experiences" can be interpreted many ways![/h]

Here is the classification from the PADI site
[h=3]
PADI Five Star Dive Center[/h] PADI Five Star Dive Center Membership is awarded to progressive PADI Dive Shops that excel in providing scuba divers with a full range of scuba certification programs, scuba gear selection, and scuba experience opportunities. To qualify as PADI Five Star Dive Center, a dive shop must meet elevated service and business standards and both promote and offer only PADI scuba diving lessons as their recreational scuba diver training. These dive shops also actively promote underwater environmental awareness and embrace the PADI System of diver education, with a commitment to providing quality training, products, services and experiences. To find a PADI Five Star Dive Center near you, visit the online PADI Dive Shop Locator.


[h=3]PADI Five Star Dive Resort (formerly Gold Palm Dive Resort)[/h] PADI Five Star Dive Resorts excel in providing traveling scuba divers with memorable scuba diving experiences, customer satisfaction, scuba diver safety and underwater environmental awareness by providing professional and outstanding service. To plan your next scuba diving trip with a PADI Five Star Dive Resort, visit the online PADI Dive Shop Locator.

 

[Jill from Phoenix]

The 5 star doesn't mean any thing, it's more loyalty to the organization in return for better pricing levels. So, it's a qualifying status for business afiliation. There's plenty of quality stores that teach padi but don't have their 5 star for some silly reason, and there's stores that don't have loyalty to the organization that should have it pulled away by breaking irra standards, but still have it because they make too much money to let go. If you take away their pricing levels, they will leave and go someplace else.

These are the standards to belong to irra in addition to fees: International Resort and Retailer Associations - Membership Standards

 

[DevonDiver]

1. Shops/resorts pay for the 5* rating. It's a misnomer for PADI to indicate that it is 'awarded'.

I went to McDonalds and upon handing over $1.50, was 'awarded' a cheeseburger....

2. Shops/resorts have to sign a contract with PADI for the 5* rating, this contract includes an agreement that they cannot teach or supply courses from any alternative agency. That has no practical benefit for the customer. It reduces the shops ability to provide a truly diverse range of training and to select the best alternatives from the market. It's really just an uncompetitive business practice... basically, a franchise scheme.

3. The 5* rating brings some 'loyalty' benefits for the shop/resort concerned - specifically, lower prices on course materials. If the shop/resort has high-volume turn-over, then that discount may out-weigh the cost of buying into that status.

4. The use of "5*" is also a huge marketing benefit, as many/most customers would make the logical assumption that it reflected some type of rating system for quality, like hotels and restaurants industries have - it doesn't.

5. The rating does not guarantee good service, quality or safety. The only practical quality/safety criteria for the rating is that PADI must not have had any verified or actioned complaints about the centre for x amount of time. PADI choose what is verified and actioned. The system doesn't include complaints, reports et al, that go to different organisations, such as local authorities, travel companies, police, coast guard etc. Of course, neither does it include any complaints, reports etc that are filed directly with the dive centre/resort. The dive centre/resort is under no obligation to forward such information to PADI.

6. I managed a PADI 5* IDC centre. As far as I know, no PADI representative ever visited the centre. Some photos of the shop were sent to PADI along with a cheque and a completed check-list (self-certified). The rating and stickers came in the post. In the time that I was employed there, I never saw, nor heard, from any PADI representative to check or assess the centre.

 

[Uber]

Thank you both for your replies - both of which are certainly enlightening. I have no problems with PADI being a profitable, even self-promoting organization, but it appears to me that the public are certainly misled by the marketing tactics used as I am sure any survey of your average travelling diver would verify.

I don't want to pick on PADI in isolation here, as I am sure "stuff" happens with other agencies too. I also know many dedicated PADI professionals who are excellent at what they do and provide everything, and more, that should be expected of them.

I feel the sport is easily big enough to support it's own independent quality control council now and I think that there is a massive opportunity being missed by not making this happen.

 

[flots am]

Thank you both for your replies - both of which are certainly enlightening. I have no problems with PADI being a profitable, even self-promoting organization, but it appears to me that the public are certainly misled by the marketing tactics used as I am sure any survey of your average travelling diver would verify.

It's absolutely intended to mislead.

Everywhere else in all other businesses, quantities of symbols are used to indicate rankings, as in "3 star restaurant", "4 1/2 star movie", etc. Only PADI rates their dealers "5 stars" knowing full well that there isn't a "4 star" or "2 star" dive shop anywhere on the planet.

flots.

 

[buiszie]

Its a tool for advertisement, and for most of the advertisement tools u have to pay.. Its up to u as a diveshop owner if want to advertise this way or another way. Same that u choose the organisation u like to join to teach diving....not the otherway around....

 

[flots am]

Its a tool for advertisement, and for most of the advertisement tools u have to pay.. Its up to u as a diveshop owner if want to advertise this way or another way. Same that u choose the organisation u like to join to teach diving....not the otherway around....

So you wouldn't' feel mislead if you went to a "Three Star" restaurant only to discover that it was never actually rated by anybody, and that the "Three Star" rating was just a sticker that WlaMart hands out to anybody who sells their meat exclusively?

flots