Scuba diving tourism

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.

The history of scuba diving tourism is linked to the history of scuba equipment development and availability, and to the development of training systems that opened up the activity to sufficient numbers to support the industry. Key equipment developments include swimfins, which give the diver underwater mobility and free the hands for other functions, the diving mask, which provides underwater vision, the open circuit regulator, a simple and reliable breathing gas source, the buoyancy compensator, which allows the diver to swim comfortably above the bottom, and float at the surface, wetsuit, a simple and easy to use protection from moderately cold water, submersible pressure gauge, allowing easy monitoring of remaining breathing gas, dive computers, and nitrox breathing gas, both of which allowed longer dives without decompression.

The growth of the diving industry in a region tends to follow a logistic curve, with a slow start and mostly established, experienced divers with relatively high skill levels exploring a new area where there is little supporting infrastructure. As the area becomes popular, the infrastructure develops and the growth accelerates until it is limited by carrying capacity is approached. By this time the main diver demography has shifted towards the inexperienced and often uncertified diver, with low skill levels and a greater tendency to damage the environment due to ignorance and lack of basic diving skills. Beyond this stage the situation may stabilise if managed well, or if not, the deterioration in value to the tourist may cause a reduction in popularity and a loss of trade.

Too much competition for customers amongst a large number of diving service providers in a region can lead to low profit margins and pressure on struggling companies to cut costs by following unsustainable diving practices and providing substandard equipment. A reduction in numbers may lead to more cooperation between the remaining companies, and a greater willingness to follow sustainable practices.