21/25 isn't air, but I digress.
I'm going to throw this back at you another way. Lets say I'm looking for stickers. I happen across your website and it says I can get one color stickers in 3x5" for $50/1000. I'm very excited, so I send you my artwork in Adobe Illustrator and with Pantone color. You can then do this 2 ways.
You can tell me that the cut die fee (for my custom shape) will be an additional $75, my Pantone ink will be an additional $150, and a UV resistant ink will be an additional $45. You don't work in Adobe Illustrator, you work with CorelDraw version 14.0, and the artwork fee will be an additional $50. My $50 stickers will now be $370, and I'm miffed, because, you see, I feel you're ripping me off.
OR. You can tell me my stickers will be $350/1000 for 3x5" custom size UV resistant stickers. From that price (you will still have to have your die maker make a die), you can reduce the paint fee because you can talk me out of Pantone, we're already priced for UV resistant, and I happen to have licensed copies of both Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw and can provide the art in whichever format you choose. Now my $350 stickers are going to cost me $150. I feel good that you have saved me money, we've opened a dialogue and I would rather shop with someone I know than someone new, and you've made more than the cut price ad you would've used to get me in the door. We've both won and can feel good about the situation. Now, you have to figure out how to get me to call you in the first place, since your price is higher than the $50 sticker guy. You do that with customer service, by chatting on all of the sticker forums, and by telling everyone you will get their stickers out the door same day and include shipping (or whatever). You do it on customer service and web presence (if you are a web based business).
I compete (loosely) with 2 other liveaboards. We all offer a ride to the same place. We all offer good air and nitrox. We all have a bunk for you to sleep in, and we all feed you. 2 of us charge about the same price, one is a bit less. On the one that is a bit less, you pay extra for nitrox, soda, beer, extras. The other 2 of us include some or all of that. AWAP rides the lower priced boat because he doesn't drink beer or soda and the extra $100 isn't worth it to him. He has made that clear to me, and there are no hard feelings either way. I have made a good business by being "all inclusive". Some folks don't want to be "nickle-dimed" to death for every soda or beer they drink. It's an extra $20 at the end of the trip, but it still feels to some like they got ripped off. I still have to do something the other boat doesn't do. They spearfish, which I don't allow, so we have to emphasize that we dive in a marine sanctuary where spearing isn't allowed. We emphasize that our boat is cleaned with a "girl's touch", which a guy may not care about, but if girls are going to use the same crapper a guy has used, it needs to not have piss all over the seat. The dive shop (or dive boat) of the future needs to market so that you feel good about paying $1150 for an open water class, not so you feel ripped off because you paid $450 and had quarry fees and minimum gear purchase fees and book fees and fills and gear rentals and.....
Yes, there will always be the customer that doesn't care that he's using a PADI manual from 1986, because he doesn't know it's been revised 5 times with 2 of them being major revisions. He may get lucky and get an awesome instructor like Peter or Bob who don't really need the manual and use it as a training aid. More often, the student gets an open water card and decides they want to do some local diving at the Flower Gardens. They get to the boat woefully unprepared for the Boot-Camp like atmosphere of setting gear up, filling out releases, picking a bunk, and all of the stuff that has to be done before the boat leaves the dock which the Captain is pressuring his Divemasters to get done so they can cast off because the earlier they leave the slower they can go saving fuel=saving money= more profits=lower prices or more amenities for the consumer. Then they get seasick. Then they can't dive. Those folks are lost to diving because they had a terrible time. They tell all of their friends how they tried diving but it sucks, how they tried the Flower Gardens but it sucks, how they rode on the Spree but it sucks. What really happened is that they found a lousy instructor who didn't prepare them for the real diving world, and he sucked.
Good luck with that pontoon boat for $25 per head. I'm sure you are quite capable of running the boat, we see lots of folks here in the keys who thought that, too. How are your CPR/First Aid skills. Got your own O2 kit and AED? Do you have a radio operator's license (which isn't really required), or at least know how to operate the radio and EPIRB? Are you competent with the GPS so that you know when you arrive at the dive site? Do you know where the locations are that you can only go to if you have a permit, and how to get through the permit process? The fines can be quite extensive. Do you know how the prevailing currents run, what the moon phase is so you can anchor in the right place to hit the dive site? None of that information is critical unless the kaka hits the air mover, but that's what you pay $250 per day for. Who is going to sit on that pontoon boat while the rest of you are diving? Does he/she know how to start the motor to come back if the anchor slips, or you get washed away in the current? That's always a great story here, us captains just smile and shake our heads. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, what I'm telling you is that a $400 open water card and a military background don't necessarily qualify you to know what you don't know yet. That's what the dive shop of the future should have told you when you signed up for class. But you got a great deal on yours.....
