**Industry Overview:**
– Scuba diving tourism history linked to equipment development.
– Growth of diving industry follows logistic curve.
– Competition among service providers can lead to low profit margins.
– Climate change likely to impact carrying capacity of dive sites.
– Scuba diving requires significant capital outlay for equipment and facilities.
– Dive boats are a large capital expense with considerable running costs.
– Health and safety aspects include high pressure filling equipment.
– Costs of qualifying as a diving instructor are significant.
– Annual registration fees are required for diving instructors.
**Tourist Motivation and Experiences:**
– Motivations for scuba divers include adventure, learning, escape, social interaction, and challenge.
– Long term enthusiasts’ motivation may be complex.
– Development of recreational divers associated with skill acquisition.
– Expectations and attitudes towards diving change with experience.
– Desire for personal growth common in long term divers.
– Dive centers provide dive charters, guides, and information on local ecology.
– Dive centers offer transportation to and from dive sites.
– Some dive centers provide accommodation and hospitality services.
– Dive centers may act as agents for tourists for accommodation services.
– Retail dive centers offer a range of services to enhance diving experiences.
**Destination and Region Analysis:**
– Three main classes of recreational diving destinations: tropical reefs, shipwrecks, cave systems.
– Tropical areas with coral reefs are significant in international diver tourism.
– Economic sustainability linked to environmental awareness and conservation.
– Liability management through waivers, medical fitness declarations, and insurance.
– Tropical coral reefs are popular destinations for recreational diving.
– Wreck diving involves exploring shipwrecks and artificial structures underwater.
– Cave diving is considered an extreme sport done in water-filled caves.
– Cave diving regions include the cenotes of the Yucatán peninsula, Mexico.
**Safety, Equipment, and Sustainability:**
– Developments in equipment, training, and services have reduced risks in scuba diving.
– Availability of medical support services and decompression chambers has increased.
– Local availability of on-board medical oxygen has improved the management of diving accidents.
– Improved training and service provision have reduced the risk of permanent injury.
– Dive tourism industry provides rental equipment to travelers.
– Scuba equipment includes regulators, wet-suits, masks, fins, cameras, and dive computers.
– Strategies for sustainable use management to protect dive sites.
– Economic risks in recreational diving include high capital costs and legal liabilities.
**Marketing, Legal, and Demographics:**
– Marketing strategies for scuba diving tourism include various channels.
– Diver training includes procedures to reduce risks to an acceptable level.
– Certification indicates competency in skills and knowledge.
– Legal aspects like waivers and medical statements reduce liability.
– Recreational diving tourists are typically male, mid-thirties, college-educated, with higher income.
– American scuba diving participants are wealthier and better educated.
– Study in Florida identified different groups of scuba divers based on motivations and characteristics.
Scuba diving tourism is the industry based on servicing the requirements of recreational divers at destinations other than where they live. It includes aspects of training, equipment sales, rental and service, guided experiences and environmental tourism.
Motivations to travel for scuba diving are complex and may vary considerably during the diver's development and experience. Participation can vary from once off to multiple dedicated trips per year over several decades. The popular destinations fall into several groups, including tropical reefs, shipwrecks and cave systems, each frequented by its own group of enthusiasts, with some overlap. Temperate and inland open water reef sites are generally dived by people who live relatively nearby.
The industry provides both tangible and intangible goods and services. The tangible component includes provision of equipment for rental and for sale, while intangibles include education and skill development, safety and convenience by way of dive charter services and guide services on dives. Customer satisfaction is largely dependent on the quality of services provided, and personal communication has a strong influence on the popularity of specific service providers in a region.
Scuba diving tourism is a growth industry, and it is necessary to consider environmental sustainability, as the expanding impact of divers can adversely affect the marine environment in several ways, and the impact also depends on the specific environment. The same pleasant sea conditions that allow development of relatively delicate and highly diverse ecologies also attract the greatest number of tourists, including divers who dive infrequently, exclusively on vacation and never fully develop the skills to dive in an environmentally friendly way. Several studies have found the main reason for contact by inexperienced divers to be poor buoyancy control, and that damage to reefs by divers can be minimized by modifying the behavior of those divers. Several methodologies have been developed with the intention of minimising the environmental impact of divers on coral reefs so that the industry can continue to develop sustainably.
Scuba diving is an equipment intensive activity, requiring significant capital outlay to establish a retail outlet with the expected range of equipment and filling facilities. Dive boats are a large capital expense, with high running costs. There are also health and safety aspects for the operator and the customer. Adequate quality control is necessary to avoid providing a harmful product. The cost of qualifying as a diving instructor is significant in time and money.
Economic sustainability is affected by environmental awareness and conservation, service delivery and customer satisfaction, and sustainable business management. Liability issues can be managed by the use of waivers, declarations of medical fitness to dive, adherence to industry best standards, and public liability insurance.