Treating Group Leader
Responsibilities as Merely the
Opportunity to Get a Free Vacation

It’s no secret that an instructor who organizes and leads a dive trip gets some of his or her expenses paid for — chiefly the accommodations and diving. There are still a number of other costs the group leader may need to cover, such as air fare, meals, taxes and incidentals. Nevertheless, it’s easy to get the impression that the reason dive instructors volunteer to lead trips is that it provides them with the opportunity to get a free “vacation.”

The truth is, if the instructor is doing his or her job, it’s no vacation.

A good group leader is on call 24/7. The happiness and well being of group members are not just his or her first priority, they are the only priority. Done correctly, this is a full-time job — and then some.

Unfortunately, some group leaders don’t get this. They assume they are on vacation, just like everyone else in the group — despite the fact that everyone else is, in essence, paying for the group leader to be there.

If you want to get a feel for just how much responsibility a dive trip leader has, see the article in the “Travel” section of the June-July issue of DiveRetailing.com. As you will see, any group leader who shirks these responsibilities is not only failing to do his or her job, he or she is creating a situation in which other group members can easily fail to have the good time they paid for.

Almost every dive guide and boat in the Caribbean and Pacific can tell you stories of the group leaders who seemed more interested in drinking at the bar or chasing the opposite sex than they were in making sure their group members were having a good time.

These are the trips you do not want to be on.

Using group members as guinea pigs »

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