Why Padi wants to create a community and sell trips

[taimen]

Customer retention in diving industry is horrible. Plenty of people quit after OWD course and most stay active in the sport for only a couple of years.
PADI trying to catch these customers by selling them diving trips instead of only new certificates sounds like a great idea. It isn't targeted to 2500+ dives crowd who can do the research and know what they want.
If succesfull, PADI will introduce more people to dive travel and liveaboards. After one or two PADI trips these people are going to look for more individually targeted services.

 

[PDT]

Actually, I think its good. A large company trying to control dive travel, it makes for good competition.

Pelagic Dive Travel, for example, is a smaller Australian based dive travel company that is independent and wanting to help those smaller liveaboards and dive resorts. As well as those shops inside resorts.

The online platform, allows the diver to search by what they want to see, when. It could be whale sharks in October, then the results show a world map with liveaboards, dive resorts, and resorts. The diver chooses the room or cabin, books, pays and receives a confirmation all in the one go.

It goes live on 1st March - check it out

www.pelagicdivetravel.com

 

[Lorenzoid]

PADI Travel was formerly Diviac. Their customer service and platform is excellent and continues to be so. In my experience, nothing has changed for me as a customer. I have 4 active bookings with them right now. Their prices are exactly the same as booking direct.

I’m not really sure what you mean by your post. Can you please elaborate?

@drbill I agree with you. I like to plan and usually book direct with most things. However, PADI Travel isn’t so much of a do-the-research-and-legwork-for-you type of travel agency as it is really just a place where you can book liveaboards. It is often times much easier and convenient to book and pay PADI for the liveaboard and enjoy nearly 24 hour customer service in English while being able to pay by CC with no fees and earn possible bonus points with your CC as they are a travel merchant if that is what you like. Sometimes, booking direct with liveaboards incurs a credit card fee (3-6%!). Others only accept wire transfers which I don’t like doing because there’s little recourse and no protection from my CC company if I need it. (Indonesia is a great example.) LOBs are no small purchase and it’s nice to have that extra credit card protection (in case of chargebacks), and the travel benefits from booking my trip on it, as well as the bonus travel points, etc.

So, paying by credit card, you essentially get a 3% discount off the liveaboard's advertised rate for booking through PADI Travel?! I would use them for that reason alone. I typically avoid the credit card fee by paying via wire transfer, but as you point out, there is some risk associated with that, and I don't get credit card points/miles or the advantage of consumer protection law.

 

[outofofficebrb]

So, paying by credit card, you essentially get a 3% discount off the liveaboard's advertised rate for booking through PADI Travel?! I would use them for that reason alone. I typically avoid the credit card fee by paying via wire transfer, but as you point out, there is some risk associated with that, and I don't get credit card points/miles or the advantage of consumer protection law.

Hi, @Lorenzoid. It's not quite a 3% discount on the advertised rate because the advertised rate for the trip is the official rate. When booking direct with many of these liveaboards overseas, if you choose to pay with a credit card there is an additional surcharge on top of the advertised rate unless you pay by wire transfer. In that case, you pay the published rate. In Indonesia, it is usually 3%. Australia (Spirit of Freedom) was the same way, but I can't remember the exact surcharge. By booking through an agency (PADI Travel, and sometimes I use Bluewater - also highly recommend Tim there), I avoid that 3% fee. And the wire transfer fee. My card gives me 3X points for booking with a travel merchant, both of which Bluewater and PADI Travel are. So, for example, on a $3K LOB, I can rake in 9,000 points vs. just 1X of that by paying by PayPal (+ % surcharges) vs. none at all by wire transfer and having to pay a wire fee. Liveaboard.com has you pay in US dollars via PayPal and also gives you the benefit of no surcharges but they are not a travel merchant, FYI...

PADI Travel usually charges you in the operator's local currency so ensure that you have a no foreign transaction free CC. I have Chase and their conversion rates are usually not bad.

It's an easy decision for me.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Hi, @Lorenzoid. It's not quite a 3% discount on the advertised rate because the advertised rate for the trip is the official rate.

My reply was terribly worded. I was trying to say that paying via PADI Travel would effectively give one a 3% discount over the total that would be charged to one's credit card if one were to instead pay the liveaboard operator directly. Never mind my erroneous mention of the "advertised rate"--that needlessly caused confusion.

 

[ScubaMeen]

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. With no transparency I meant "Padi is everywhere" and its really hard to actually research on your own without being influenced.
When I did my DM with PADI i was so brainwashed. I had no idea how many great agencies are out there, I thought a PADI shop is the best shop to go with and other shops are not safe (my PADI instructor actually told me that every morning!) I feel really bad about it afterwards.
Now I am getting all these email from them, which I find disturbing, as I am a big supporter of other communities (as I mentioned i am a Deepblu ambassador) and I want to help new divers to understand whats going on and to research on their own.
Smaller dive shops that train other licenses should be able to get their own support system like the new Padi travel booking page.
Also I hope new divers will have enough EASY online source to do travel online planning, getting actual reviews and I wish beginner divers wont just trust PADI that easy (like i did...)

 

[taimen]

This is similar to the ongoing "what is killing local dive shops" discussion.
Competition is good. Other agencies really should make their services more easily reachable. PADI travel agency will only widen the customer base. Beginner divers will trust PADI easily, but I am sure many of them start researching other options after they get hooked.

Teaching that other agencies are unsafe is of course false and unethical. BTW I doubt you can find those claims in official PADI materials. That is more a misconception of individual hops/instructors which PADI of course should not allow to be distributed.

Now I think every training agency should make it easy for an interested diver to book a dive trip (with or without instruction) through their website. People are used to buying services that way.
The present way of listing affiliated shops and instructors, with often inaccurate contact information is horrible. If you start emailing the addresses listed in some agency's website, you probably receive very few replies. Most dive shops around the world have weak online presence.
Someone just complained that in certain area none of the dive shops listed their course schedule online. Just try to think of an aspiring diver trying to choose shop/agency, when most of the shops do not give even basic information about their product online (like how, when, who is teaching, cost). Add all the travel related nuisances of international payments and reservations, I think this could be a killer product.
Instead of leaving recently certified OW students in the hands of greedy individual dive shops, they will be able to sell a complete adventure for let's say first 100 dives. During that time your average customer will start researching options, so there will be room for competition.

PADI rules the beginner diver market in many areas because they provide the easiest access to diving. That is quite sad, but it is not PADI who is to blame. It is the other agencies.

 

[outofofficebrb]

@ScubaMeen Sorry, I still don’t understand. If you’re suggesting that PADI Travel is biased and cant be trusted....PADI Travel was formerly Diviac and they haven’t changed much outside of the actual name and putting up their dive destination summaries/guides with information like when to dive, water temperatures, regions/dive sites in a country that are highlights. There is nothing to sway a consumer on and they aren’t currently pushing any classes on the website. I guess this could be said of any websites where you read reviews - you just hope every consumer does more research. Don’t just trust one source.

I think what it does do is bring a familiar name to a travel website and people may be more comfortable booking with them vs other liveaboard booking websites, especially if it’s their first LOB. They may not know that Liveaboard.ccom, Dive The World, and other smaller agencies are reputable and fine places to book from. They may associate comfort of booking with a website from website design, where the company is located, etc. It’s a lot of money to sink into a trip so that would be understandable.

Diviac was excellent before and PADI Travel continues to be. I’m a consumer that has 4 active bookings with them right now and am very familiar with their site, process, and customer service. I am also certified through PADI, almost finished with my DM. I can assure you I am not sipping the PADI koolaid and “defending” them. (In fact, if I ever wanted to do more advanced diving or Tec diving I would go to another agency.) 3 out of my 4 active bookings were made when it was still a Diviac and the last when they became PADI Travel. I almost made a 5th with them recently. At this point, it’s simply a name change for consumers. Think of it like Orbitz, but for liveaboards. It’s purely a booking engine.

Also, regarding competition, similar to MAP pricing on products, Liveaboard published pricing is the same no matter where you buy it. From Liveaboard.com, Dive The World, PADI Travel, or even direct. The only variation is with return customer discounts but the published price is the same. Dive The World does this, as well as certain boats/fleets. Hopefully more will extend return discounts.

I get the sense that your conclusion is extrapolated from your negative personal experience with PADI so far (understandably so) and not from an actual experience of using the website or having booked with Diviac before it was PADI Travel or as it is now as PADI Travel. Is this correct?

Edited to add: it looks like they have an affiliate program...I don't think they had this when it was Diviac but I can't say for sure. I don't think it changes whether you can "trust" them or not...It is merely a booking engine. PADI Pros and those that are part of the affiliate program may refer you to that website to book since they may get a kickback but think of it like booking a small/obscure hotel in a foreign country that may not necessarily take credit cards or speak English fluently. You're now booking on Orbitz.com or Travelocity.com, or similar instead. Except in this case, coupon codes don't apply and the price is the same everywhere, for the most part.

 

[boulderjohn]

Teaching that other agencies are unsafe is of course false and unethical. BTW I doubt you can find those claims in official PADI materials. That is more a misconception of individual hops/instructors which PADI of course should not allow to be distributed.

Disparaging other agencies and instructors is a violation of PADI member standards.

 

[Saniflush]

In drilling into a possible trip (Aqua Cat) it does show that and added benefit is accident insurance if the trip is >$1000. It may or may not be wroth while but that is something that I have not seen on any other site selling spots on liveaboards.