As we open the doors today celebrating our 28th year as a dive business on Koh Tao now might be an interesting time to look back on how Koh Tao has developed over the years and how Big Blue ourselves adapted to the increasing changes endured by this tiny little tropical island paradise to be one of the most popular places out of all the Koh Tao dive resorts.
It was early summer 1991 & Michael Spjuth the founder/owner of Big Blue had just arrived on a plane from Sweden with enough money in his hand to buy a second hand car. Which is what most 23 year olds might have done. Michael tho was here to open a Dive Center! And after being inspired by a movie by legendary movie director Luc Besson about a couple of Breath Hold Divers from the 1960’s, Michael opened Koh Tao’s 2nd Dive Center- and called it Big Blue.
It was just a small little dive shop at the end of the only pier on Koh Tao. The job involved sitting around most of the day waiting for customers to arrive on the island once a day and trying to persuade them to come dive with us over the other Dive Center, a center that no longer exists called Planet Scuba.
It wasn’t long before people started hearing of Koh Tao and its crystal clear waters. Stories of an unexplored diving paradise around a little known island about 90 kilometers north of Koh Samui, Thailand, became part of the backpacker banter & as Koh Tao started to get a mention in the travel books like the Rough Guides & Lonely Planets, Big Blue grew too & became Big Blue Dive Center which come the millennium need to be changed again as we expanded a little & opened the first Koh Tao Dive Resort on Sairee Beach.
So it was 2000 AD & we had just opened our 5 Star PADI Gold Palm Resort, with a Beachside Dive center, bar & restaurant, operating with 2 purpose built Dive Vessels, leaving the choice of sites for diving Koh Tao up to our guests & leaving directly from our Koh Tao Diving Resort. Which comprised of 5 Beachside fan bungalows as well as over 20 fan rooms all with ensuite bathrooms & another 10 Air Conditioned rooms. Our own Big Blue Diving Restaurant & Beach Bar quickly became a favourite with guests & locals alike with its ambient al fresco style dining quite literally on the waters edge & an amazing seat when it came to enjoying some of the worlds best sunsets at one of Koh Tao Thailand most popular scuba diving resorts.
Over the next 10 years tourism and scuba diving really boomed throughout Thailand and especially here on Koh Tao. Koh Samui opened an airport that made the trip from Bangkok a lot quicker and easier & then Lomprayah upgraded their inter island ferry service form a single speedboat doing a round trip a day to Koh Tao from Koh Samui via Koh Phangan to a fleet of luxury catamarans with another route opening up directly from the city of Chumphon the closest place to Koh Tao from the mainland.
In 2003 we opened Big Blue Diving Khao Lak, on the West Coast of Thailand in the sleepy seaside resort town about an hour north of Phuket. Here we originally offered scuba diving Full Day trips to the Similans but as we grew we started to offer Liveaboard cruises onboard our own private Liveaboard MV Halleluja, as well as faster daily speedboat services to the world famous Similan Islands & the more challenging dive sites of the Surin Islands including the legendary Koh Bon (Manta Rays) Koh Tachai (Leopard Sharks) & in the words of Jacques Cousteau Thailand’s Number One Dive Site – Richelieu Rock (Whalesharks).
In 2008 we opened up Big Blue Diving Guesthouse also known as Preewa. A brand new clean, spacious & quiet little building set back about 100 meters from the beach & just a 2 minute walk from our main resort. Ten private rooms upstairs offering Air con or fan & with double bed or twin options available, as well as six 4 bed AC dorm rooms and in every room a TV, Big Blue Guesthouse was the perfect accommodation option for light sleepers & also for our regular scuba diving Groups who were looking for something a little bit nicer & where everyone could stay at the same place.
2012 was a huge year for us in the making of Big Blue Diving when we opened our second Beach front diving resort also on Sairee Beach, Big Blue 2. This new Koh Tao Dive Resort was a little more upmarket than our original resort. Big Blue 2 offers Air Conditioned Bungalows on the beach, Private AC and Fan rooms and 4 bed air con and fan dormitories with ocean views, a purpose built divers pool, and another excellent Beach side Restaurant and Bar. It was the future of Big Blue Diving.
Until 2015. A year of great anticipated sadness with the impending knowledge that the lease for Big Blue 1 Diving Resort was due and the option to extend was not being made available to us. Not to be defeated we reinvested heavily in a brand new Koh Tao Dive center with offices, classrooms and relaxing area for our Big Blue Chaba Team from Japan at the very popular Blue Wind Resort on Sairee Beach, Koh Tao Thailand.
In 2016 we celebrated our 25th Anniversary in scuba diving & diving on Koh Tao by extending our new Koh Tao diving resort to accommodate a further 5 budget Beachfront Dormitories, and 8 backpacker rooms and extended our restaurant and incorporated our brand new Dive center here at the new Big Blue Diving, Koh Tao, Thailand. We sectioned off, in our dive shop, a space for retail equipment and we also opened 4 brand new classrooms including a dedicated Big Blue Pro classroom for all our professional level Training.
With Big Blue Diving being a very well established name in the Scuba Diving Industry, and having achieved our goal of being able to offer everything under one roof our eyes are now focused on offering the same set up we have here in Koh Tao & Khao Lak, in some other beautiful location for scuba diving. With so many exotic locations throughout the world and such amazing underwater encounters still to experience, and with a recognized brand and logo, and a customer base comprising of 28 years of divers… why the flip shouldn’t we.
So we’re looking. Looking for locations and looking for partners. What do you think? Isn’t it time you started living the life you’ve only imagined!
