PADI Islands

The concept is to sell a package where an Open Water Diver (OWD) signs up for 5 specialties (Deep, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy plus two other diving specialties) and gets the Advanced Open Water Diver (AOWD) for free.

How do I sell a five course pack in this current climate?

Calculate the costs of the course materials for the five specialties plus the costs of 6 PIC’s (five for the specialties and one for the AOWD) and charge the customer this as a deposit. The customer is then locked into your dive centre for five courses and cannot go anywhere else.

They can spread the course payments by completing one course per month (or something similar) and paying the balance just before the specialty course starts. This helps the customer by spreading the payments over pay packets.

Why should a customer sign up?

Let’s imagine the average cost of Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Dry Suit Diver and Enriched Air Diver (with dives) specialty courses cost £750 and the average AOWD course cost £250.

The customer saves a massive £250 or 25% in this example and all it costs the customer initially is the deposit for the materials and PIC’s.

In this case the customer also going to do more than twice the amount of dives – a minimum of twelve dives instead of five.

Why should you consider offering this package?

It sometimes seems to be harder to sign people up for specialties as they progress through the core PADI diving courses towards Divemaster and Instructor. By signing them up to specialties courses straight after their OWD course they are more receptive to the specialty courses and every single one of your divers that sign on to this package will become a Master SCUBA Diver (MSD).

Previously the general way to promote specialties was during or after the AOWD course. A problem with this method is that the diver potentially able to go away and do specialty courses with someone else or even not bothering to do them at all – why do you want to let them do this?

Whilst you are not receiving the AOWD course fees, if you carefully organise and schedule the five specialties you could save could overheads (entrance fees, travel etc) if you compare it to having to try and teach the AOWD and five specialty courses independently.

In this example whilst you are not getting £250 for the AOWD course you are guaranteeing yourself £750 worth of courses.

The final reason for implementing this idea is that the customer who is now spreading their course payments to suit their needs will also be open to some specific equipment sales directly related to their course coming up.

How can I market this idea?

PADI have already started the seed for this. Remember back to your OWD course, Knowledge Review 5 and Question Number 12 – “What is the relationship between Adventure Dives, Advanced Open Water course dives and Specialty Diver course dives?”

You could also promote different groups of five specialties. Here are some ideas to get you started:

“UK” specialty package consisting of Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Dry Suit Diver and Wreck.

Small Poster Download

“Photography” specialty package consisting of Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Enriched Air Diver and Digital Underwater Photography.

Small Poster Download

“Technical” specialty package consisting of Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Enriched Air Diver and DPV.

Small Poster Download

“Go Pro” specialty package consisting of Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Night and Search and Recovery.

Small Poster Download

“Live aboard Dive Boat” specialty package consisting of Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Boat Diver and Drift Diver.

Small Poster Download

“Conservation/Green” specialty package consisting of Deep Diver, Underwater Navigator, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Underwater Naturalist and AWARE – Fish Identification

Small Poster Download

We have designed some cool posters to be displayed to advertise the course packages. Also included in the toolbox are static and animated (awesome) banners along with versions of the posters that can be displayed on web sites and sent with emails.

Static Banner Download

Animated Banner Download

What about following training standards to be able to offer this package?

The customer will be aware from their OWD that they don’t have to complete five specialties to get their AOWD certification.

You must make sure that if you are conducting the specialties you keep current with the latest training bulletins and meet any logistics, equipment and performance requirements (if you are unsure contact training@padi.co.uk).

So what are you waiting for?