Dive centre decisions

I gained experience in managing dive resort operations overseas before coming back to Perth, my home city to work in a city-based dive centre. I had a multitude of ideas and strategies to recruit and retain divers - or so I thought.

I learned pretty quickly what worked at a dive resort didn't work nearly as well in a dive centre. That was not to say I didn't keep trying so it could be argued I didn't learn all that quickly. Back in those days, I had no formal business and management training and learned from untrained peers who were experimenting just like me.

What we lacked in experience, we certainly made up for with enthusiasm. It was a very hands on approach, we had the most successful dive operation in town so what we were doing was done well, we had a customer based approach.

Decision-making may be simply broken down into programmed and unprogrammed decisions; that is dealing with familiar and unfamiliar problems. Programmed decision-making is simple, it is repeating previous successful examples.

The development of unique approaches to complex problems is far more difficult - this is especially true when you have a vested financial interest.

This was where my decision-making broke down at the time, I was unfamiliar with formalised decision-making models although I was open to suggestion. My previous employment saw me making high value decisions in large companies at an operational level. 

This was different as I was undertaking diagnostic and trouble-shooting decisions based on proven engineering principles. I am a person who utilises models, matrix and programs; I am an extremely extremely process driven individual who detests fumbling my way through to a shaky solution.

Now viewing dive operations from the perspective of an experienced operator, I see that decision-makers in dive resorts and dive centres not only lack the experience to make good decisions based business principles. 

Many dive centre managers lack vital industry experience required for a competitive service orientated market. The recreational dive industry tends to attract more alternate lifestyle types and not typical business managers.

This is why in successful dive locations, inexperienced dive operators immediately engage in a price war under-cutting each other. They fail to calculate their costs and have no idea what their break-even point is, they engage in a downward spiral of pricing their products and services below their competitors until everyone is losing money. 

I sometimes marvel at the stupidity of such strategies, the consumer doesn't always benefit as equipment and services are run down, poor maintenance and a general lack of safety tarnish the industry.

So what is the answer then? The dive training agencies need to offer greater training opportunities based on the business of diving, many tertiary institutions offer hospitality and tourism courses. 

The problem arises from the issue that the low wage environment of the recreational dive industry generally attracts lifestyle based workers on minimum wage. Why pay big dollars for a business orientated education for a minimum wage job?

This means you generally don't attract serious business orientated operators seeking a real return on investment. When dealing with micro-economic theory, a business person looks at opportunity cost, when combined with finance principles of the time value of money and accounting principles of return on investment - you have to ask, why bother?