Please Participate - World Bank Study on Dive Tourism

[Alrick Cheung]

Hello,

As a brief introduction, my name is Alrick and I work at Euromonitor International, a market research firm. We have been commissioned by the World Bank and IFC (International Finance Corporation) to conduct a study on the tourism industry on birdwatching, diving, cultural tourism, historical tourism, and adventure tourism.

The owners of ScubaBoard.com have graciously agreed to support the study by allowing us to post here and gather information about diving and divers.

Part of our study is to identify the habits and needs of global consumers travelling for these purposes. Some of the questions we ask relate to frequency of travel, preferred locations and key considerations.

As divers, we would like to seek your insights and input in this study. If you are interested in sharing, please follow the link below to the anonymous survey:

Survey

The results of the survey will contribute to a report that will be published at the end of the study and will be made available to the public domain by the IFC.

If you have any questions or concerns at all, please do not hesitate to email me. I would be happy to tell you more about the study and what we are looking for.

Best Regards,
Alrick Cheung
Associate Consultant
Euromonitor International
www.euromonitor.com
alrick.cheung@euromonitor.com
11 Keppel Road #06-00 ABI Plaza, Singapore 089057

 

[The Chairman]

We want to hear all about the results when you finish! It was a pretty thorough survey.

 

[DeputyDan]

I did the survey - but it was prepared by a non-diver.
Many dive locales were not on the list of countries (Bonaire for example).
Also, few if any discussions about group travel (dive shop for example) versus solo travel (just me and a buddy)
Did not see where they considered dive focused travel agents - just the normal run of the mill AAA (which sucks for dive travel) travel agent.

 

[Damselfish]

I bailed 1/3 of the way through. Stuff like how much and what percentage do I spend on what, I don't remember and it doesn't don't allow skipping questions, so all I could do is make stuff up. Not even sure how to answer some questions for multiple trips. Got the sense there were going to be more and more questions where none of the above was the answer, without that being an option.

 

[tursiops]

Long survey that appears to really be about visiting Papua New Guinea.

 

[Wookie]

It did seem to be about PNG, where I have been twice and they don't advertise at all. They also weren't prepared for someone who takes their own boat to Cuba or Bahamas.

 

[Blasto]

Having to type in destination names is really overkill. At least some of the questions should be made optional if most people are to complete it.

Also, broken down into too many steps.
Lol@"reveal" of being about PNG near the end.

 

[Alrick Cheung]

We want to hear all about the results when you finish! It was a pretty thorough survey.

Definitely! Thank you for participating. It will be interesting to see how the different preferences pan out.

I did the survey - but it was prepared by a non-diver.
Many dive locales were not on the list of countries (Bonaire for example).
Also, few if any discussions about group travel (dive shop for example) versus solo travel (just me and a buddy)
Did not see where they considered dive focused travel agents - just the normal run of the mill AAA (which sucks for dive travel) travel agent.

Hi DeputyDan,

Thanks for your feedback! Not sure if you remember any of the locations off the top of your head, but if you do, let me know and we can add those in I believe.

Are there particular points you had in mind regarding the group travel vs. solo travel and dive focused travel agents? Happy to discuss them further if you're interested!

I bailed 1/3 of the way through. Stuff like how much and what percentage do I spend on what, I don't remember and it doesn't don't allow skipping questions, so all I could do is make stuff up. Not even sure how to answer some questions for multiple trips. Got the sense there were going to be more and more questions where none of the above was the answer, without that being an option.

Hi Damselfish,

Appreciate your feedback! Yes, it's true the survey is quite detailed in that sense. We're really just looking for ballpark figures like if my trip cost 10K, i spent maybe 2K on flights, 7K for the liveaboard, and 1K doing other things. Then it would be 20%, 70%, 10%. Thank you for checking out the survey though!

Long survey that appears to really be about visiting Papua New Guinea.

It did seem to be about PNG, where I have been twice and they don't advertise at all. They also weren't prepared for someone who takes their own boat to Cuba or Bahamas.

Having to type in destination names is really overkill. At least some of the questions should be made optional if most people are to complete it.

Also, broken down into too many steps.
Lol@"reveal" of being about PNG near the end.

Thanks for the feedback guys! As IFC/World Bank does work with PNG, there are some specific questions about PNG at the end yes.

Do understand that the survey can be quite long. Ultimately the purpose of the survey is to get a good understanding of where divers want to go, how they are getting there, what they want to see and what their travel habits are. If you are interested in sharing any additional thoughts not captured by the survey, happy to discuss here!