Size Of The Technical Diving Market

[Centrals]

I would love to see PADI's numbers!!!! Commercial secret!

 

[Bennno]

Reduction of new blood into expensive sports is wide-spread.

I'm not sure this is true. Don't forget, we're only looking at US OW and international TDI numbers.

Diving is an international industy. Look at places like Koh Tao, 7 year ago they had 70 dive shops on a tiny island but a few year prior, there were only a few.
More people travel now than they did in the 90s... I guess lots of Americans get certified outside the US compared to 20 years ago... almost all people I have certified in touristy places like Spain, Thailand or Egypt were tourists from Europe, Australia and North America. I think the DEMA number could be misleading. All it tells you is that fewer people get certified in the US.

 

[mattia_v]

PADI does publish a few very general statistics:

PADI certification and membership statistics | PADI

which states it has "averaged over 900,000 diver certifications each year globally for the last 19 years". Ages and men/women split is also reported for the past 5 years ( 2/3 - 1/3, average age of 30). This would seem to suggest a slight drop in overall numbers since the world's population has grown, but I don't think certification numbers in a first world country such as the US mean much; I do know that a lot of people I know are vacations divers like I am (30-something, middle class), and the vast majority got certified while on vacation; few have ever done a realy diving holiday, preferring to vacation somwhere where making a few dives is also an option.

 

[Wookie]

This is only TDI though.

True. Who else is issuing Cavern cards? NACD? Nope, GUE? Nope, IANTD and NSS-CDS? Yup, but I'd bet TDI has the lions share. I can ask Joe Citelli how many certs were issued last year, maybe it's not private information, does anyone have a hotline to IANTD?

 

[Bennno]

Who else is issuing Cavern cards?

Padi and SSI? There are also a bunch of agencies that belong to CMAS and they also offer cavern and even cave courses. They all probably issue fewer certs than TDI but there're lots of these little agencies like Protec, IDA, ISE, PATD and so on. Even if they sell only like 30-50 certs each... combined, that's a few hundered right there.

Is TDI the largest 'tec' agency at this moment?

 

[CptTightPants21]

True. Who else is issuing Cavern cards? NACD? Nope, GUE? Nope, IANTD and NSS-CDS? Yup, but I'd bet TDI has the lions share. I can ask Joe Citelli how many certs were issued last year, maybe it's not private information, does anyone have a hotline to IANTD?

I have no basis for this opinion except what I have seen the few times I have been to Florida, but I have a feeling that IANTD and NSS issue a lot more cavern/cave cards than TDI. TDI definitely dominates the Advanced Nitrox/Deco/Trimix market though........

 

[boulderjohn]

Many dive shops are quite literally afraid to make an investment in tech unless they are in an environment where they have a fairly certain chance for a payoff. They are afraid they will lose money, possibly big money, by doing so.

The biggest fear is unsold inventory sitting around. In order to have a decent supply of materials on hand, they have to invest a lot of money in it, and if customers don't buy, that is all lost. The amount they have to carry is sometimes more than you might think because many of the tech equipment suppliers require a large initial investment and a large guarantee of annual sales. That requires a large investment in order to be ready for a market that might not materialize.I remember visiting a shop in Florida with a new owner and a commitment to tech. I saw inventory from several suppliers, all of whom I knew had large minimum sales requirements, and I wondered how they could afford that. That shop was out of business in a couple of years.

An option is to have a supplier who can get the equipment to you when it is ordered, but that doesn't really work in this era. The shop for which I work decided to do that, using a specific supplier for tech equipment. As the tech instructor, I ended up dressed out in their gear when we made that commitment. That was a disastrous decision, because it took the supplier so very long--sometimes months--to fill an order. My tech students realized that if they wanted the gear in time for the classes, they needed to order from online shops, which could get them what they needed in a couple of days. The net result is that having students take tech classes drove away people who wanted to buy from the shop but couldn't. (The shop is now looking to make a deal with another supplier.)

The cost of instruction is another issue. For OW classes, you can have much larger numbers of students, which means more money per class for both the shop and the instructor. The tech market is small to begin with, and the limits on the number of students that can be taught at one time in a tech class further compounds the problem. This greatly increases the cost of the class per student. It makes it hard for the both the shop and the instructor to make a decent profit on teaching a class. For example, this weekend I will be driving to New Mexico (about 6-7 hours) and staying in a motel for several days while I conduct SOME of the required dives for ONE trimix student. Think what that does for a shop's pricing structure for that course.The situation makes it enticing for the instructor to go fully independent, and it makes it enticing for the shop to avoid tech altogether--even avoid telling potential students about tech.

 

[KevinNM]

I would suspect that number is for cavern certifications only and does not include those who took cavern and intro together or went zero to hero.

It was every c-card issued during that period. So if they got a cavern card it's there. If they didn't get a cavern card then no.

 

[kelemvor]

True. Who else is issuing Cavern cards? NACD? Nope, GUE? Nope, IANTD and NSS-CDS? Yup, but I'd bet TDI has the lions share. I can ask Joe Citelli how many certs were issued last year, maybe it's not private information, does anyone have a hotline to IANTD?

NAUI and NASE

 

[Wookie]

Many dive shops are quite literally afraid to make an investment in tech unless they are in an environment where they have a fairly certain chance for a payoff. They are afraid they will lose money, possibly big money, by doing so.

The biggest fear is unsold inventory sitting around. In order to have a decent supply of materials on hand, they have to invest a lot of money in it, and if customers don't buy, that is all lost. The amount they have to carry is sometimes more than you might think because many of the tech equipment suppliers require a large initial investment and a large guarantee of annual sales. That requires a large investment in order to be ready for a market that might not materialize.I remember visiting a shop in Florida with a new owner and a commitment to tech. I saw inventory from several suppliers, all of whom I knew had large minimum sales requirements, and I wondered how they could afford that. That shop was out of business in a couple of years.

An option is to have a supplier who can get the equipment to you when it is ordered, but that doesn't really work in this era. The shop for which I work decided to do that, using a specific supplier for tech equipment. As the tech instructor, I ended up dressed out in their gear when we made that commitment. That was a disastrous decision, because it took the supplier so very long--sometimes months--to fill an order. My tech students realized that if they wanted the gear in time for the classes, they needed to order from online shops, which could get them what they needed in a couple of days. The net result is that having students take tech classes drove away people who wanted to buy from the shop but couldn't. (The shop is now looking to make a deal with another supplier.)

The cost of instruction is another issue. For OW classes, you can have much larger numbers of students, which means more money per class for both the shop and the instructor. The tech market is small to begin with, and the limits on the number of students that can be taught at one time in a tech class further compounds the problem. This greatly increases the cost of the class per student. It makes it hard for the both the shop and the instructor to make a decent profit on teaching a class. For example, this weekend I will be driving to New Mexico (about 6-7 hours) and staying in a motel for several days while I conduct SOME of the required dives for ONE trimix student. Think what that does for a shop's pricing structure for that course.The situation makes it enticing for the instructor to go fully independent, and it makes it enticing for the shop to avoid tech altogether--even avoid telling potential students about tech.

I started my tech training with an independent IANTD instructor at Fill Express. Way back before they were DGE, and they only sold Dive Rite gear and fills. I decided when I walked in that I wanted to be as professional a fill station and technical dive boat as anyone in the world. I made an investment of way over $75k to be that boat.

I will never make the money back.