DIVE TRIPS - SHORTAGE OF PARTICPANTS

[Bill Bird]

My branch has recently had problems completely filling two dives. One to Scapa Flow and the other to the Farnes. Both are now going to go with two spaces on each trip unfilled. We are also experiencing difficulties (despite herculean efforts of the Committee and designated organiser) with a dive to Plymouth in September. However, I noticed that there seems to be a higher than average number of postings advertising spaces on dives from other branches. Is this a general problem?

How does your branch decide on its dive programme for next year, and at what point does the branch consider cancelling a dive?


Bill Bird

[David Walker]

How does your branch decide on its dive programme for next year, and at what point does the branch consider cancelling a dive?

As a University branch we tend not to plan quite so far in advance - the first e-mail about our Easter trip last year went out at the start of December, we start planning the bigger Christmas trip in June, and most others will usually be done on a month or two's notice.
We have had problems filling our trips too though - a cheap 5 days in Oban (~?100 for absolutely everything) at Easter never filled, a trip to Plymouth got 6 when we could have taken 10, and even planning our Red Sea trip at Christmas hasn't been easy to get people to fill it.

I'm not entirely sure why we aren't filling the places anymore - for us we have new people moving through each year so I assumed it was more just to do with the people we currently have not being so interested - if other clubs are having problems where regular members aren't going on trips anymore then I can't see any particular reason for that.

When planning trips we generally work on the basis that we want to do so many a year (usually 3 big, full club trips - one Christmas, one Easter, one Summer, ie Uni holidays), and smaller weekend trips possibly once a term, but they are much more dependent on finding people before we book anything. All of our trips we send out e-mails / ask people when we see them who is interested, to get a general feel for how it will go before we book anything - if its something expensive like the Red Sea trip then it isn't booked until we've got deposits from everyone going, for something like Plymouth we'll just book it and pay the deposit, and then sort out who is going. Doing it this way we do avoid having to cancel trips (none have ever been booked and then cancelled while i've been at the club), but possibly don't do as many as we'd like - there are an increasing number of trips organised between members privately, basically on an invitation-only basis rather than being open to the whole club. I don't personally like doing that sort of thing too much, especially if its using the club equipment or boat, but we have so many people who will keep saying for weeks that they definitely want to go, but ultimately when it gets to paying they change their mind and we're left with less time to organise things than we need, and trips are going half-full.

David

[Finless]

Although not a BSAC Club, we have the same problem with our Club bookings. In order to get a Charter boat booked for next year we have to place our bookings very soon or risk missing out on the weekends WE want.

We seem to have dropped down to a hard core of about 7 or 8 regular sea divers when we need 12 to fill the boat. There are a few novices coming along BUT the world seemd to be full of pond divers or "talk" divers. Oh, don't forget the warm water only divers - I guess you don't suffer to much from them in UK BSAC Clubs. We have even offered to do shallow dives to get people into the swing but with no joy for the most part.

For example, we only have 7 Club members for a Charter from Brighton on the 4th Sept. Fortunately we have been able to fill the rest of the spaces from posting on dive fora (specifically on Yorkshire Divers).

It is a problem and, in our case where we don't have a Club boat, quite expensive. If you find the answer and it is applicable to us non BSACers pls let me know!

Maybe novices shouldn't get their C cards until they promise to go out on at least 50% of the Clubs outings.

There does appear to be a quite reasonably sized population of floating divers (excuse the pun) who are happy to take odd spaces on boats. Also, some of our local skippers have set up a "SmartGroups" thing on the net where everyone who is registered to the group receives a direct email with any information sent out by other members of the Group.

[derek perry]

Hi Bill

We have the same problem and are a central London Branch. Most of our diving is along the South coast, East and West of Brighton. Like the previous post we have to book NOW for the dates we want next year. We do not have a club boat as they are very expensive to run. Alternatively we run a system where the branch books and pays for the boat and sells the spaces to the members. We charge 1/10th the cost of the boat per space. In other words for a ?300 boat we charge ?30.
As most boats take 12, you can see we can and do make a profit on some, when fully booked. Over the last 10 years we have spent less money on hard boats than it would have cost running a club boat, without all the hassle.
We fill the additional spaces by selling them onto other branches. We have one in particular that pre books a block of spaces from us and will pay no matter how many of them turn up. Further to that we advertise on this forum and advise the dive skipper of the spaces and they can often fill them.
We also allow brand new unqualified members and other friends and relatives (non divers) on at a flat ?10 a trip to see what a diving trip is like, and for a jolly day out. This obviously helps to offset the costs.
We also have several dive skippers who charge per diver as opposed to per boat and these are good because there is no cost to the branch.

In your case, with up to 8 regular divers, you can safely sell on the additional 4 spaces as soon as you book the boat. Why not try to find another branch to sell them to like we have. Obviously there are dangers they won't turn up and won't pay but we haven't had that problem as our other branch knows the agreement and have always paid.

We also have some rules.
1/ A boat is full at 10, provided we have 10 no drop outs have to pay
2/ You book it you pay for it. No deposits or up front money, it's done on trust.
3/ No selling on your space. Any branch spaces must be filled first.
4/ If you had a full boat (10) and say 3 people drop out but you only find 2 replacements the cost of the vacant space is shared by the 3 people who didn't show. None of this 'but Fred took my place'.
5/D.O.'s say is final

In exchange for all the above rules we have a final rule that if you are genuinely ill you don't pay. This might sound like an easy opt out but believe me we haven't had anyone pull a fast one yet, again it's a trust thing.


Hope this helps

Derek