Diving has a high attrition rate - according to one study, only 7% of Divers ever Dive after one year of Certification. It also has a poor retention rate - by one estimate less than 20% of all Divers who continue Diving after the first year ever become "Active Divers", defined in one study as those who Dive at least more than once a year.
But orders of magnitude more people GET certified than 20 years ago, and, in the end, there are more active divers than there used to be. Maybe there doesn't need to be meteoric growth. Manage the business; not the share price, as it were.
Additionally, new Diver Certifications have declined by roughly 2.5% each year for the last two decades.
That's patently false. PADI has seen huge growth in new certs.
And the demographic of Diving continues to climb, with the median age now at 46.
Cite? When 10 year olds are getting certified, that's dubious.
And finally, in a 2003 survey, non-divers, when asked why they didn't want to be certified gave these as some of the primary reasons:
Its an isolated experience
Well, let's cater to the collectivist lemmings then.
PADI's got that one covered, but again, why should diving help the rise of learned helplessness and mediocrity? We need MORE things that are difficult, before we have a society of people who cower at the prospect of wiping their own behind.
It is too dangerous or frightening
And we fight THIS by making it bloodsport?
Why not spike the air tanks with vaporized Ritalin? Honestly, do we NEED to contribute to the collective shrinking of attention spans?
There are concerns about the quality of training
And using flash in the pan sensationalism and pre-adolescent bloodthirsty degeneracy as a marketing ploy, thus attracting MORE immediate gratification adrenalin junkies with attention deficits is going to ameliorate this HOW? That's like addressing the lack of quality in high school education by encouraging severely behaviorally handicapped four year olds to skip to the 9th grade.
SO, the question is not so much about my personal decision to destroy the entire Dive Industry with my crass motives, but INSTEAD to try to find a way to help an ailing industry
Except it's more of the medicine that's spoiled much of diving already.
that allows us to do what we love...
Your claimed love for diving sounds like Obama's recent faux pas - "We live in the greatest country in history; please work with me to change it."
Your strategy won't help diving, because it will only attract the sort of developmentally arrested perpetual adolescents who will never achieve the earning power to support it. When their parents eventually throw them out and make them support themselves, they won't be able to afford diving, and they won't stick with it. Even if they can afford diving, they'll dump it in a New York minute for the next trendy activity that crosses their ever shifting field of vision. That's why diving has such poor retention rates now. PADI's constant lowering the commitment and effort bar has attracted people only interested in getting their experience ticket punched, then moving on to bungee jumping or whatever else everyone is talking about at the bar this week. All they want is the ability, when the topic of diving comes up, to say "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" and then brag about the NEW thing they're into now. Your sensationalist, over-commercialized approach doesn't attract people who make long term commitments - it attracts the attention-challenged who flit from one interest to another. The only reason skate- and snowboarding holds them so well is the whole slacker/stoner flavor of it; is that what you want for diving?
