PADI update from DEMA

[DevonDiver]

all DSD divers must now be registered (so PADI can market them)

Given all the 'non-agency' blurb... what RIGHT does PADI have to 'take ownership' of the private customer details of dive shops and instructors? This is private, commercial info - and PADI marketing to those people exposes the customer to a wider market (the competition); and, most importantly for some, excludes non-IRRA PADI operations/instructors.

That would mean for the original certifying operation/instructor (freelancers), that PADI is directly contacting THEIR customers to market to THEIR competitors...

 

[oly5050user]

Given all the 'non-agency' blurb... what RIGHT does PADI have to 'take ownership' of the private customer details of dive shops and instructors? This is private, commercial info - and PADI marketing to those people exposes the customer to a wider market (the competition); and, most importantly for some, excludes non-IRRA PADI operations/instructors.

That would mean for the original certifying operation/instructor (freelancers), that PADI is directly contacting THEIR customers to market to THEIR competitors...

Its not just with DSD participants. It also is with any student , any course that results in a certification card. PADI now requires a email address for student to process cards. This can go either way. Yes it exposes a customer to competitors, but also puts more advertising for the activity that can result in more business for all.
Solution is do not call it discover scuba,call it something else. Call it "bubble experience" or what ever you can think up. Then you do not need to register the customer as it is not a PADI program, but just an "experience" one. I get emails from facilities on Grand Cayman when a person local to us does a discover scuba there and advises us to follow up on them for a full ow course. This sometimes brings us business, so I cannot complain about it.

 

[DevonDiver]

The fact remains that a student is the customer of the dive center/instructor, NOT PADI. That is the essence of the 'Non-Agency' relationship.

Therefore, PADI have no right to demand private customer details, beyond those needed to process and deliver certification cards. Neither do they have a right to further market towards those customers; especially where that marketing favors competitors.

 

[Mikko Ilari Laakkonen]

There remains an option to do "try dives" which is not a PADI DSD program but a simple quick underwater ride. Padi doesn't recommend this but they do allow it. Students will not get their amazing benefits like temporary free scubaearth membership (lol) and free DSD ecard (boohoo).

- Mikko Laakkonen -

I love diving and teaching others to dive.

 

[Peter Guy]

Query -- how does PADI track the identify of DSDs? Since we know that PADI can't keep track of certified divers unless their names, including middle initial, are identical, it seems to me it should be pretty easy to create a "new diver" for eLearning purposes -- including, if need be, a new email address -- Joe@mydiveshop.biz -- which just forwards to their real address.

Re the Mexico's shop complaint that TSandM raised -- IF the DSD leader/instructor does the partial mask flood and clear and the regulator recovery during the dive, it can count as Dive One (and they are supposed to do both during the confined water, are they not?). Then the shop can say "One more dive and you'll be a Scuba Diver" which is what they want to do and the person gets their bucket list punched and a card.

 

[danvolker]

I get why the shops in the central interior of the US don't like this development.....but maybe they would if they look at a much bigger picture. You guys are dealing with a tiny , tiny share of the Travel and Vacation market--or of the general population at large. The best efforts of DEMA have been pathetic in gaining more market share--in getting much more than 1 or 2 percent of the population to CONSIDER trying scuba diving. Most Dive shops have very little hope of influencing the masses on Prime Time TV ( you don't have the advertising budgets of the big local Car Delars--you can't dump $100,000 this month to get 30% of the local population AWARE of why YOU are important to THEM, and why they should try diving....

On the other hand.....go to a hot Resort in the Tropics.....98% or more of the tourists at these great Tropical Resorts you might read about in Travel & Leisure, have never really considered diving as important on their bucket lists.....The HUGE implication of this new PADI direction, is that it "could" create the financial payback for the Dive operators in these tropical paradises, to make special deals with each Resort, to really place DSD experiences into the mainstream of hotel guest awareness...Now they can even kick back some advertising money to the Hotels, to allow use of their Lobby real estate for signs, TVs playing a DSD outing, etc.
No one could possibly be more effective at Capturing an additional 5 to 10% of a huge population base, than could these tropical resorts--given the incentive to do so....While PADI has not actually driven this yet, they just offered some major tools, and have created a financial mechanism where this could work for the first time!!!!


Oh yeah.....so if the Tropical Dive Resort Dive Shops can suddenly EXPAND the total market by 5% or more of the overall travel population, this could create EXPLOSIVE GROWTH in the business running through every dive shop in America!!!!