Hello January & Happy New Year to you all. Time to have our yearly State of the Dive Center address and assess our product and our service and what we can do to improve this year.
Let’s start with what it is we are selling which if course is scuba diving trips around Koh Tao and scuba diving certifications from beginner thru to scuba diving professional. At this time of year diving on Koh Tao is fantastic- flat seas crystal clear visibility & heaps of marine life. We’ve had 3 different Whaleshark visits in the last 3 weeks. We got Brydes Whales and dolphin sightings as they pass by Koh Tao on their way to the Angthong Marine Park. The Pick-handle Barracudas are back at Chumphon Pinnacle. We’ve had a couple of eagle ray sightings and Fiona had a near brush with an Indian Walkman and there’s all the usual suspects including a large amount of turtle sightings at this time of year too.
Giving you a guided tour of life under the surface, in an enjoyable, educational and safe manner, or teaching you about the joys of scuba diving, the underwater world and the equipment itself, while also making you aware of how to avoid unnecessary accidents, is our product, and we have to maintain an exemplary standard of service at the best price and in the best way possible. Gone are the days of sitting in classrooms and watching a boring 2 hour DVD. More dive time less study time. Our online courses make it now possible to do the normal 4 day Open Water Course at our Dive center in just 3 days cutting out a full day of sitting in a classroom while on holiday.
The conductors of our product are led by a team of extremely hard working and dedicated dive professionals with considerable experience in management, scuba diving, and business. The dive center is led by Jim who relies very much on his trio of managers Steven, a career Divemaster with over 15 years experience at Big Blue running the operations side of Big Blue including scheduling, shop & boat management and customer correspondence. Tim, Manager at Big Blue Pro with 20 years experience in over 10 countries as a scuba instructor and Instructor Trainer including working time with SSI Thailand as an Instructor Examiner. Andy, Manager at Big Blue Tech the longest established and most decorated Tech Diving center in Asia. With a dive center being led by characters of such high caliber you can easily understand how those that work with them or trained by them hold them in such high regard.
We have 2 big dive boats for our courses and fun divers and a smaller boat for our Tech divers. Big Blue Tech’s boat Big Blue is the original Big Blue Diving boat from when we first opened back in 1991, so of all of our dive boats, she holds a special place in our hearts. She even has the same captain that it had back in those days too! Enzo our bigger dive boat has enough space for the compressors on so we don’t need to waste time moving the scuba tanks on and off, backwards and forwards, from boat to boat and land and back every day. And Waverunner is scheduled to go to the Chumphon boatyard beauticians next month where it will undergo a full makeover which will include a couple of shared cabins we can accommodate a few more of our adventurist divers looking for a couple of overnight trips to some unexplored wrecks, Sail Rock, the Angthong Marine Park & of course the incredibly beautiful little dived Chumphon Marine park.
Shuttling out to the dive boat means involves a short stroll to the beach directly from our meeting point at Big Blue to our beach boat that will take us directly to the dive boat which is way more preferable to jumping on and off taxis and climbing in between boats to get on your boat and driving to & from the pier to your dive center or resort the whole time in a taxi. Leaving directly from the beach saves at least 30-45 minutes of extra travel time every trip.
Equipment wise we’ve just bought 30 new sets of masks, fins and wetsuits and are currently servicing every single one of our tanks, regs and BCD’s so we’re right up there with the best for equipment. Our in house scuba service technician is on hand every day to keep all of our equipment functioning and in good order as well as keeping an eye on the pool every day.
We’ve also got over 120 rooms here at Silver Sand Resort ranging from beachside bungalows, pool view private rooms, dorms and DMT accommodation, as well as upto any choice of 20 or so restaurants, bars, cafes and eateries in the immediate vicinity to our dive center.
And the pride and joy of our new year was going to be the opening of our brand new poolside bar & restaurant but in reliably Thai ‘Thai-time’ we’re running late. About a month or so unfortunately but its coming guys & we can’t wait to show it off to you and have our first party night there.
So the product is good. The diving is great. Koh Tao is amazing. , our location in the heart of Sairee is perfect. The boats are spacious, the equipment is new, the divesites are original. We got the dream team prepped and ready and we’ll be opening our new bar & restaurant within the next couple of months or so.
Can’t effing wait! How about you?
