List of dive destinations to not go to...

[mikeycanuk]

We've gone to Turks a few times, but a few as non divers. We went last year for 2week dive trip and had a blast split between Salt Cay and Provo, this year it's Grand Turk. Cheap-no but had as much fun topside as under water. Diving is still new and I like living with the locals in a house and driving around, the diving is high on he list but not to the exclusion off all else. Which is why a livaboard is probably not an option other than the Galapagos. Being stuck on a boat...not our thing.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[ronscuba]

I like the tier system more too. Here is a list of dive destinations of the world with approximate/ball parks costs involved to travel to these places and dive them. These costs include air travel (from DC area where I am based) and dive and stay packages.

NFL and Labrador 700 air + 1700 =2400
Iceland 700 air + 2500 (Westfjord), 3621 (Highlight), 1168 (Silfra+Strytan) = from 2000 to 4300
Alaska 700 air + 2700 = 3400
Gods Pocket (Browning Pass) 700 air + 2000 = 2700
Socorro (Nautilus Explorer) 2750 + 500 air = 3250
Cocos 4935 liveaboard + 600 = 5535
Komodo 2700 (Liveaboard)+ 1800 air = 4500
Raja Ampat 3000 (Liveaboard) 1950 air = 4950
Fiji 3000 (Liveaboard) + 1800 air = 4800
Palau (Liveaboard) 2630 + 2000 = 4630
PNG (Liveaboard) 3000 + 9430 = 12430
Galapagos (Liveaboard) 5395 + 687 = 6082
Bonaire 700 air + 1000 = 1700
Belize 707 + 2400 = 3107
Cayman 730 + 2000 = 2730
Puerto Rico 350 + 1500 = 1850
Playa Del Carmen + Cozumel Flight = 700 + 7 nights 1200 + 300 = 2200 including meals
Little Cayman = 565 + 2814 = 3379
Turks and Caicos = 500 + 900 (5 days) = 1400
Blackbeard Bahamas = 1000 + 400 = 1400
Bonne Terre mine: 450 Car and Flight + 480 diving and hotel = 930
Tobermory 80/ dive 160 + hotel 3 nights = 330 = 490 (wont need airfare)
Catalina LA 400 air + 3 day liveaboard 750 = 1150
Dry Tortugas = 1000 + 400 flights = 1400
Croatia 600 (6 night 10 dives) + 1300 airfare = 1900
South Africa = 1200 + 407 (6 night 10 dives) = 1607

As you can see some destinations are really high on the overall cost but relatively low on quality. Example Belize and Little Cayman. Granted there are a lot of people who have gone there and had fun but just scroll up and look at the places that they could have gone with that kind of money. Once you put marketing aside and look at the numbers in comparison to everything else available, Belize and Little Cayman are actually places to avoid (if you want your money's worth diving wise).

There are many other tourist traps up there on that list. Yes PNG is great diving but is it worth over 12000???

Similarly there are some great dive destinations that offer more value for the money but are less known. Croatia for example is one place that is insanely cheap! 6 days of diving plus hotel accommodation and some meals for 598 USD. This is Adriatic sea and is considered world class diving.

Curious why list and price compare destinations with different durations ? Some 3 nights, some 5, some a week.

Also, how did you compile all this pricing for so many different destinations so fast ? Where did this pricing come from ?

How do you value the 5 dives a day and all food you can do on a liveaboard vs. 2-3 dives a day for land based ?

What kind of value do you assign seeing and diving with 14 whalesharks in Galapagos ?

Turks & Caicos for $1400 includes what ? Air, diving, hotel, meals ? For $1,400 ?

 

[altaskier]

The more I dive in different locations, the more I appreciate what's interesting about each dive. So far I've dived in 10 countries (about to add Croatia to the list this coming weekend), on vibrant tropical reefs, in cold kelp forests and Lake Michigan wrecks, in 80+ foot vis and 5 foot vis... I have only passed up one diving opportunity (Hainan Island in China, where it seemed it would be too depressing to see a trashed underwater environment with cattle car operators allowing novices to crash into already-destroyed corals). All the rest have been worth getting wet.

Of course there are places I prefer to others. I loved our family vacation to Costa Rica but would not recommend it as a diving-centered destination, and my local Illinois quarry is simply a place to practice skills underwater and socialize with other divers above water. I would also say that Maui had better diving than Costa Rica but again would not make my list as a dive destination. I've thoroughly enjoyed the British Virgin Islands, and a liveaboard on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Really, though, I don't think I've found a single dive to be unsatisfying/a waste of time.

 

[ronscuba]

I've been very fortunate to dive many different places. Some on week long trips, some on cruise ship stops.

Here is my list of places I would not return to just dive.

Puerto Plata Dominican Republic
Bermuda
St. Maarten
San Andres Colombia
Costa Rica Land based

Hawaii is getting a lot of negative opinions, but I definitely would dive there again. Manta Ray night dive is not to be missed and I really enjoyed my dives at Maui Molokini crater. Hawaii is one of my favorite places for a mixed dive and topside vacation destination.

 

[Doppler]

I have to confess, I measure the value of dive travel in "Mexico trip equivalents". It costs roughly $2500 to fly me and my husband to the Yucatan for a week of condo rental, car rental and cave diving. So when a trip across northern Vancouver Island ended up being 3 Mexico trip equivalents, it got the thumbs down . . .

As subjective as Lynne's comparison is, it surely is the only one that most of us really use. I know that the maths I do include a little equation that compares trip cost to "Days in North Florida Cave Country..." It works for me.

The original posting, and subsequent post by the OP, is missing the important element of VALUE... several have pointed that out and although it is highly subjective, it's vital in any evaluation. Since the OP has pulled numbers from the net and seems to have zero experience with international dive travel, he cannot add that element into his assessments. This renders them valueless but valid for debate.

Real data, data worth looking at and considering, might come from primary research of divers who travel (focus groups, onLine surveys, CS surveys supplied by inbound and outbound operators, etc.) These data are hard to come by, believe me.

Two elements that I've found useful to evaluate dive travel is how likely would you be to make a return visit, and how likely would you be to recommend the trip to a friend?

And of course a third would be that basic customer satisfaction question that asks us to assess price vs value. A good example is the OPs listing for Newfoundland and Labrador. Ocean Quest runs charters out of South Conception Bay to the Bell Island Wrecks... four iron ore carriers sunk by UBoats during WWII. Ocean Quest has a resort for its charter guests. It's a class operation. The lift to St. John's airport is expensive and Rick's pricing for a bed and boat ride is not cheap. However, the value of the diving and the repeatability of the experience is extremely high.

In fact, I think I'll take a group back there next year! LOL!!

And for the record, ANY Caribbean diving (with a couple of exceptions) is fine with me and decent value... I guess I have simple tastes.

 

[drrich2]

Two elements that I've found useful to evaluate dive travel is how likely would you be to make a return visit, and how likely would you be to recommend the trip to a friend?

To me, this is similar to watching how people vote with their dollars; given they could go to any of many places, but nowhere near all of them, where do they choose to go?

Even then, it's no exact science. I suspect Bonaire does far more 'dive tourism' business than Saba, yet from what I've read of Saba (deep diving, pinnacles, some current, all by boat?) both underwater and topside it's very different from Bonaire, making for an apples to oranges comparison. And while a lot more 'voting with time and dollars' goes to Bonaire, I don't recall any posts from people who went to Saba claiming it's not as good as Bonaire.

Yet more people go to Bonaire. For a nearer apples to apples comparison, Curacao is billed as similar to Bonaire with more topside non-diving activities, and a lot of people stop there briefly en route to fly to & from Bonaire. It seems bizarre that Bonaire seems to draw much more diving tourism (judging from the forum and elsewhere), yet it does.

It's not always obvious why one destination is first tier, and another second or third.

Richard.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Lynne's "Mexico Trip Equivalents" (MTEs) is on the mark! I suspect my wife and I subconsciously use either MTEs or KTEs (Keys Trip Equivalents) as units of measure to compare other opportunities.

Other posts bring to mind another consideration: We often combine diving with topside activities or visits to friends in other parts of the world, so it's not realistic for us to think about which destinations are "not worth it" based on the diving alone. Often, our "dive trips" are more like bringing our gear along on a trip that's mainly land-based. Topside adventures tip the scales for Belize, for example. Come to think of it, for us, just being in the fascinating country of Mexico is a factor that gets some weight in our decision of whether a destination is worth it. If we were to travel all the way to Papua New Guinea, we'd probably want to do some rainforest trekking or something in addition to diving, or combine it with a visit to the far North of Australia. Maybe the bottom line is that I don't do enough "dedicated dive trips" for this kind of "worth it" measure to be useful to me. I find it impossible to separate the diving from the overall experience of being in an interesting place.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Hype, marketing, price per dive, ease of diving, dive centic location, flight prices

If you use Scubaboard, you may end up diving Coz in a Bp/W.

I plan to say more to OP once I get to a proper keyboard vs my phone but for the time being. . .

My multiple returns to San Pedro Belize is because of the overall ease of the whole package. Easy to get there. Price of dives is good. Dive boats come to you for pickup and drop off. You don't have to go to them. For me, even better in that my chosen dive op is literally steps away from my chosen hotel. I also happen to love the little town and the island. Over the years I've made friends and I get to missing them. I call San Pedro my second home and it is like going home when I return. I love diving with the same crew and we are so familiar with each other's ways. But I often think of all the other wonderful places I could have experienced by spreading it around to other locations a bit more than I have done.

Perhaps those are some of the reasons people return to Bonaire so often.

 

[ronscuba]

Hype, marketing, price per dive, ease of diving, dive centic location, flight prices

If you use Scubaboard, you may end up diving Coz in a Bp/W. ...........

That's pretty funny.

And like you say, there are little things that matter to each of us on a personal level. Some are more important than others and everyones preference is a little different.

For example. I didn't like the diving on Bonaire.

 

[mathauck0814]

Even then, it's no exact science. I suspect Bonaire does far more 'dive tourism' business than Saba, yet from what I've read of Saba (deep diving, pinnacles, some current, all by boat?) both underwater and topside it's very different from Bonaire, making for an apples to oranges comparison. And while a lot more 'voting with time and dollars' goes to Bonaire, I don't recall any posts from people who went to Saba claiming it's not as good as Bonaire.

Voting with dollars puts weight on the influence of "number of divers who choose to spend their dollars" and not on "dollars spent" there is an inherent skew toward budget divers (because there are frankly more of them). I think the only way to look at destinations is to take the money out of the equation and ask, "Where do I want to go?" Once you have that list you start to look at costs and schedules and you begin the process of elimination because of compromise. Where you arrive at as a chosen destination is almost always the result of compromise and is thus subjectively the "best" location for your trip; but by no means the best location as you've already crossed those off your list.