1. Introduce yourself and briefly describe your background.

My name is Ernest Teo and I am a local of Kuching. I have been a conducting PADI courses and dive in Kuching for more than 10 years now.

2. Why did you decide to go into this business? How long has it been established?

I just love scuba diving, the underwater world and want to share the magnificent WWII shipwrecks of Kuching with other divers. I started organizing local dive trips independently in 2005 and it was only in 2011, where I establish Premier Marine And Scuba Centre and operate the diving in Kuching as a business with the hope to build up a dive industry here.

3. Can you describe your services (and products etc)? What is your top offering?

Our company offers PADI courses together with sales and servicing of dive equipment and organizes both local and outbound dive trips. But most of our client came to us for PADI courses and our WWII wreck dive trip.

4. Who are your clients / customers? Why do they select you over others?

We have both local and tourist who came to us because we are highly recommended for our quality service, good knowledge of our own dive sites and high standard in our diving practice.

5. How has technology, such as computers and the Internet, impacted on how you serve or conduct business?

Over the years, technology had played a big part in our business as we use it for promotion, keeping our client updated on upcoming events and to communicate with divers around the world. It is just amazing what the internet can do us today.

6. Do you plan to expand (range of offerings, service areas, geographical reach etc.)? If yes, how? If no, why not?

Yes, we plan to upgrade our facilities in the future such as increase the number of boat and also to provide accommodation to divers. It will be a dive resort style but blending in with our local ambient. This will provide divers not only dive experience but also the local culture.

7. What are the biggest issues (serving your clients, running your business etc)?

Our biggest issue is local manpower. The dive industry in Kuching is not fully develop yet making it difficult for us to obtain proper staff.

8. What do you wish you’d done differently?

I should have promoted the WWII Shipwrecks of Kuching years ago as it is a gem sitting in our very own background.

9. What are you glad you did?

I am very demanding in the standard of diving practice and a pro-conservationist. These have proven to be the main contributor to my success over the years.

10. Where do you see yourself and your business in a year’s time?

I see our business will double up in the next season and the Kuching will be a must dive wreck site in South East Asia.

11. Words of wisdom

Treat your clients as your own dive buddies and take good care of your underwater environment; and they will take care of your future.

12. Please give your contact details so that your target audience will know how to reach you.

For those who are interested to visit Kuching for the wrecks, the can visit our website www.wetwolfdive.com or go to our facebook page facebook.com/divekuching. If they need to contact us directly, they can always call +6012-8892336.

1. Introduce yourself and briefly describe your background.

My name is Maslinda Abdul Talib. Before I started in the watersports industry, I worked in legal unit with Inland Revenue Board in Johor. Then in 2008 I resigned with no particular plan in mind. Watersports like teach swimming is the last thing I thought I would do but 7 years later, here I am promoting safety and healthy lifestyle through watersports with my business partner Zalwana Abd Manap and other dedicated team members.

2. Why did you decide to go into this business? How long has it been established?

At first I just share my swimming knowledge among friends and not for commercial. But after sometimes, since the demand was good and there are not many lady swim instructors in the market, I attended the official and formal courses just to get some credentials and add some knowledge. Since 2010, everything fell in place as planned.

Further history of our inception in the industry can be seen here

3. Can you describe your services (and products etc)?

We offer courses in swimming, scuba diving & freediving. We are well known to provide above average services and personalized method of teaching that is based on the client’s ability.

We are also the only Instructor Training Center for Swimming, Scuba diving & freediving under SSI certification agency in Asia, maybe even the world. So our range of services not only limited to people who wants to learn, but also we can cater to people who wants to make watersports as their future career or business.

4. Who are your clients / customers? Why do they select you over others?

Since most of our instructor and swimming teacher are ladies, we have a larger number of female customers over male. But since we have started to promote our business to both genders, the numbers of male clients have also increased.

We also now try to increase younger clients as now we are focusing on adults market. Most of them chose us because of the personalized service we offer, flexibility that we gave to our clients, and of course, the experience and our expertise to serve.

5. How has technology, such as computers and the Internet, impacted on how you serve or conduct business?

We started first, on online medium. From just a community to a business that offer full range of aquatic courses, from beginner to professionals.

65% of our clients found out about us thru online medium (faceboook, Instagram, linked in, google etc), 20% through long term engagement and the rest from offline marketing (flyers, words of mouth etc). In our point of view, the internet have played a very large role in how we do business and serve our customers today.

6. Do you plan to expand (range of offerings, service areas, geographical reach etc.)? If yes, how? If no, why not?

Since we started as a community, the main objective is always to spread awareness and help in creating bigger marketplace. For us, this is like baking a very large cake, so that more people can get the portion of the large cake. Even your portion is only one, if the cake is large, your 1 part will be enough.

However, we realized that we can never do this on our own. We do have plans to expand the services and reach out to more people by teaching other people to do the same or better than what we do now. Therefore, we are in active search to look out for venture capitalist or investor to work together to realize these plans.

One of our plans is to do a tour to develop potentials youth from swimming to becoming swim teachers. Once they have completed the whole process, they can offer their services to their own community. We hoped by end of 2015, we will be able to certify at least 20 new swim teachers in many areas outside the Klang Valley and open up their business there.

7. What are the biggest issues (serving your clients, running your business etc)?

The biggest problem sadly came within the industry itself. Because majority of people in the industry now (swimming & scuba diving) tend to compete on price instead of quality. Quite a number of centers cut down on the price of courses too low to get more clients. But at the same time they are actually killing the industry and make it unsustainable for others. With the rise of the cost of living especially in Klang valley, some of the prices offered by some of these “businesses” are totally out of mind; it’s too low even to cover the cost. When they can only get little profit, they will have the tendency to cut some corners in the teaching method or with low quality of instruction.

In the end, everybody will either need to stop their business operation or also join the price war by reducing the teaching quality. The results from this practice, the end products (swimmers and divers) are often not reliable and have the tendency towards unsafe practice and behavior.

For freediving, since we are the people who currently promoting freediving, we took very good care on safety practice. We highly encourage and promote “Safe Freediving through Education”. We carefully formulate our course price that can justify the effort, time and service offered but at the same time will not burn a hole in your pocket.

Since we started from bottom up (as community), we know this problem well as we do received complaints and enquiries. When we now have entered the industry as a business, our top down approach is to educate people on the importance of high quality teaching and price that is justified. After all, watersports are all about safety, and safety doesn’t come cheap.

The second problem that turns into opportunity is most people never thought a ladies duo are able to enter and spearhead a business in this industry. There is still some bias but at many times, this issue is not giving us much trouble to ourselves. Thankfully, we met more good people in this industry than the bad ones.

8. What do you wish you’d done differently?

Honestly, we are quite happy on how things work out even there are many things that we can do better. This is still a learning process for us and we are bunch of happy students.

9. What are you glad you did?

We are glad that we have started in the business as a community of enthusiasts rather than straight away as a business entity. With community approach, there are many things we learnt and shared with others. People felt closer to us because as community, we speak for the majority, and we voice out concerns of public. As community we also serve as a platform to get neutral opinions from others.

Even when we have entered the business, we will maintain this community approach and will be socially involved with the mass to see and listen to the community needs and serve them appropriately. We are like a gap filler in this industry.

10. Where do you see yourself and your business in a year’s time?

By 2017, we hoped that we can achieve our goal of creating a reliable swim and diving professionals. What we plan to do is not only to develop them to be skilful, but also we intend to embed business skills to them and help them create a sustainable business.

In 1 year time, I might not be in the water as much as I’d like to, but I hoped it can be replaced with quality time teaching other enthusiast making water sports as their way of living through viable business.

11. Words of wisdom

We are Malaysia’s Most Active Watersports Community, promoting zero to reliable in skills development and safe freediving through education.

12. Please give your contact details so that your target audience will know how to reach you.

Community Website : www.divher.com
Swim Community Page : www.fb.com/berenangitubest
Dive Community Page : www.fb.com/divher
Lady divers group : www.fb.com/groups/missdivers
Freedivers Group : www.fb.com/groups/freedivher

Business (Swimming) : www.bibswimming.com
Business (Diving) : www.bibdivher.com
Swim teacher Course : www.swimssi.asia

Email : info@bibswimming.com | info@bibdivher.com
Tel : 016-3900 131 (Mas) | 012-920 8994 (Wana)

1. Introduce yourself and briefly describe your background.

Hi, my name is Naysan Munusamy and I’m one of the Managing Directors at Great Ocean Divers which is a fun loving and awesome dive travel agency based out of Malaysia but we do many trips to far flung destinations like Palau, Maldives and Layang Layang. My own background is that I was in the banking sector for many years but my hobby and passion has always been scuba diving to which I’m now living my dream and running this dive travel agency along with my partner John Ung.

2. Why did you decide to go into this business? How long has it been established?

Great Ocean Divers was established about 7 years ago by my partner John Ung and has build up a great loyal customer base here in Malaysia. I’ve just joined recently to help boost our marketing efforts with a focus on one of Malaysia’s best hidden diving destinations Layang Layang.

3. Can you describe your services (and products etc)? What is your top offering?

Great Ocean Divers offers many trips throughout the year from Palau to Maldives to Malapascua but our favourite diving destination has to be Layang Layang Island. It’s right off the coast of Sabah and its seclusion and distance from the mainland is what makes the island so attractive and the diving there is truly world class with a smorgasbord of pelagics available each dive.

Layang Layang is a truly rare diving destination and probably the only diving destination in the entire of South East Asia where divers can consistently find large schools of scalloped hammerhead sharks roaming the ocean undisturbed. Just last month we caught on video a school of 60 hammerhead sharks congregating in a large school and it was a truly magnificent sight to behold. On top of that, the occasional thresher shark can be found along with white tip and black tip reef sharks a common sight. Schools of striped barracudas are also common and another main draw are the large schools forming tornadoes of big eyed and giant trevally fishes. It’s every underwater photographer’s dream to capture such magnificient pelagic marine creatures and the underwater visibility in Layang Layang is truly spectacular with visibility usually nothing less than 30 meters and usually well over 50 meters in the un-polluted and pristine waters of Layang Layang.

4. Who are your clients / customers? Why do they select you over others?

Our clientele are Malaysian divers who love the fun loving atmosphere that we create during each of our dive trips. People always associate our Great Ocean Divers dive trips with awesome dive destinations and a crowd of really fun loving Malaysian divers.

5. How has technology, such as computers and the Internet, impacted on how you serve or conduct business?

The diving travel industry is one that has welcomed the digital age with a multitude of digital innovations with mobile apps and such. At Great Ocean Divers, we do keep up with technology with an updated website and plans for our own mobile app in the near future but at the same time we are very focused on providing our customers with a real human touch by ensuring we have cool and fun dive guides accompanying our dive trips.

6. Do you plan to expand (range of offerings, service areas, geographical reach etc.)? If yes, how? If no, why not?

Yes, we certainly intend to do so with increased diving destinations and recruiting non Malaysian divers to come join our dive trips as well.

7. What are the biggest issues (serving your clients, running your business etc)?

Unfortunately there are two big issues currently facing our business. Firstly is the economy and the ever weakening Malaysian currency. This makes our overseas dive destinations more and more expensive to Malaysians. Secondly would be mother nature in terms of typhoons and natural disasters hurting the coral ecosystem in specific locations in South East Asia thus harming the coral population and making the dive sites no longer attractive.

8. What do you wish you’d done differently?

Well I certainly try my best not to live my life with regrets so I have to say that as of right now, I don’t wish to have done anything differently.

9. What are you glad you did?

Well I’m glad that I took the plunge to leave the safe banking career I had and venture into business particularly a business in an industry which I’m really passionate about.

10. Where do you see yourself and your business in a year’s time?

Well I would certainly like to envision that in a year’s time, both myself and Great Ocean Divers would be able to increase our dive trips as well as increase our customer base to include non Malaysian divers as well

11. Words of wisdom

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they should stop to take measure of where they are in their career and life. Be daring, be bold and take the leap. Always remember that life is not worth living if you’re not doing something that you’re passionate about.

12. Please give your contact details so that your target audience will know how to reach you.

Naysan Munusamy
Great Ocean Divers
Mobile: +6012 338 7037
www.greatoceandivers.com

1 Introduce yourself and briefly describe your background.

Mr. Mohamed Riyaz is one of the most accomplished, successful, knowledgeable and experienced person in the inbound tourism business in the country.

He achieved success through vision, hard work, personal relationships, travel trade network, determination, and innovative approach to business, philanthropic work and his passion for going to the extra mile.

Furthermore, he has earned the trust and respect of owners and operators of resorts, hotels, private islands, picnic islands, diving safaris, sailing cruise, transport providers (Seaplane and Speedboats).

Due to his success, professionalism, friendliness and high standing in the travel and tourism industry, he is able to maintain excellent relationships with all the concerned government authorities in the country, such as, the Ministry of Tourism, The Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC), The Department of Civil Aviation, Department of Immigration and Emigration, Maldives Airports Company, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Maldives Customs Services.

As a result he is among the leading, most admired, most respected and reputable person in Maldives tourism industry.

Mr. Mohamed Riyaz started his carrier with the National Bank of the country ‘ Bank of Maldives where he had worked for over 13 years in various jobs of which the last was as a Manager for one of the banks branches.

After leaving the bank in 1996, he then joined the tourism industry and worked as a travel consultant for an inbound travel company. Then in 1999, he founded Inner Maldives Pvt. Ltd., with a partner, which became a successful inbound tour operator.

After 6 years with this company, he realized that his expertise, knowledge and experience could be better utilized in a new venture, thus came the new company Lets Go Maldives Pvt. Ltd.

By utilizing his expertise, knowledge, experience and industry network, he is determined to make Lets Go Maldives the most professional, reliable and high quality service-oriented tourism business in the country.

Source: http://letsgomaldives.com/lets-go-maldives/#managing-director

2. Why did you decide to go into this business? How long has it been established?

​I believe that in Maldives tourism is our blood and if we want to established business it has to be tourism related. Country has less than 400,000 people, targeting business to them is not very attractive for me. We started in 2005.

3. Can you describe your services (and products etc)? What is your top offering?

​We are presently owning the award winning and one of the largest inbound travel company in the Maldives, and owns the luxury Diving boat for divers and surfers, we offer almost all the resorts, all has the quality services and unbeatable rates. ​ We will be opening our own concept of boutique hotel in this year to add to our products.

4. Who are your clients / customers? Why do they select you over others?

​Our clients are all over the world, we target not only Asia but to Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East. We have an unique destination so it has its own attraction.

Why us? We do have 24hr service at the Airport and sales team do have 24 hour serves for our guest. Our rates are wholesale rates directly from the Resort, are very competitive. We are reliable, we are local experts in the field with years of experience in the field, this makes us unique. ​ “you can rely on the unique expertise of those who know Maldives resorts than no one better”.

5. How has technology, such as computers and the Internet, impacted on how you serve or conduct business?

​Technology is the main tool now for any business, specially for hospitality business without technology, products are hard to sell. ​

6. Do you plan to expand (range of offerings, service areas, geographical reach etc.)? If yes, how? If no, why not?

​As said we are targeting to all over the world, we want every one to experience Maldives once in a life time, we are always looking for business partners from all over the world.

7. What are the biggest issues (serving your clients, running your business etc)?

​Biggest issues are the airlines, we still don’t have national airline that can cater most of the destinations, and scheduled Airlines are not cheap for most of the travelers who wanted to come to Maldives. ​

8. What do you wish you’d done differently?

​We wanted to provide more unique and attractive packages to Maldives so our clients are looking for something different in every year, varieties of choices to cater any budget and still they can spend holiday in the Maldives.

9. What are you glad you did?

​We are happy to celebrate our 10th Year of Lets Go Maldives Pvt. Ltd. and award winning and the largest inbound tour operator in the Maldives and keep our services better and better we will open our own hotels and resorts soon.

10. Where do you see yourself and your business in a year’s time?

​We are working on technology to achieve another 30% increment on next year. ​ We will be having our own projects specially for divers, surfers and budget holiday makers.

11. Words of wisdom

I never did anything different, when I started in 2005 on my own. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, success comes with vision and hard work “never give up if you have a target to achieve”.

12. Please give your contact details so that your target audience will know how to reach you.

Mohamed Riyaz
Managing Director
Lets Go Maldives Pvt Ltd / Experience the Maldives with a difference!
1st Floor / Lets Go Tower
Male’ 20 – 025
Tel: +960 334 7755
Fax: +960 330 7755
Mobile: +960 7773111
www.letsgomaldives.com / www.anastasiayacht.com