When a dive centre opens, the website and the boats receive most of the attention. Four months after opening, our experience shows that the deciding factor is the people.
On a small island, a business cannot post a job advertisement and choose among fifty applicants. Hiring takes place in the village, on the neighbouring island, among the people who are available and willing. Guests arrive from all over the world, while the team is mostly local. The way that team treats a nervous first-time diver influences reviews more than any other factor.
Guests remember the people, not the boat. We held that view before opening, and the first months have confirmed it.
Should a small tourism business hire for skills or for attitude?
For attitude, with skills taught afterwards. The principle is long established because it works.
Skills can be taught. A new employee can learn to fill tanks safely, rig equipment, drive a boat, handle bookings or progress through the dive professional levels. PADI offers a complete path for this, from Divemaster through the instructor ratings, described on its PADI going pro page. Our founder spent about four years progressing along that path, from Assistant Instructor to Master Instructor, which shows how much of it can be learned by someone willing to put in the work.
What is much harder to teach is how a person treats others when tired, when a guest is difficult or when nobody is watching: warmth, patience, honesty when something goes wrong and the desire to do the job well. Some of these qualities are visible in a first conversation, and more in the first week.
In a small tourism business, we therefore recommend giving attitude the greatest weight. A kind, reliable person with little experience usually becomes an excellent team member. A person with every certificate and a poor attitude will cost the business guests, and probably other staff members as well.
This applies well beyond diving: a lakeside restaurant in July, a campground, a guesthouse with a housekeeping team, a surf school.
Why does paying fairly and on time matter so much?
Because every payday shapes the business's reputation as an employer. The point may seem obvious, but it is the one we have most often seen small businesses neglect, in more than one country.
When cash is tight, there is a temptation to delay payroll by a few days, on the assumption that the team will understand. Sometimes it does, once. However, every late payday tells staff exactly where they rank. On a small island, news travels quickly. An employer's reputation becomes either a hiring advantage or a hiring obstacle, and it is built one payday at a time.
Fair pay is also part of the equation. Where tourism revenue comes from abroad and wages are local, it is easy to pay the going rate and consider it fair. We encourage owners to look further. Employees who feel fairly treated stay, and employees who stay become skilled. Turnover carries costs that do not appear on the payroll line: repeated training, errors, and guests who notice that the team is new every season.
This connects directly to the business plan discussed in September. When cash for the low season has been planned, the business does not have to choose between paying staff and paying for fuel. The seasonal cash reserve is also a staff retention plan, and that link deserves to be stated explicitly in the plan.
In which language should staff be trained?
First in the language they think in, then in the language of the guests. Many operators in the region do the opposite.
Since guests mostly speak English, the natural reflex is to train in English. It appears efficient and provides language practice. For someone whose first language is Indonesian or Balinese, however, learning a technical procedure in a second language requires twice the effort. The trainee may nod without having fully understood. On a dive boat, incomplete understanding is a safety risk.
The more effective approach is to teach the procedure in the language the person thinks in, confirm that it is mastered, and then practise the English that accompanies it: how to give a briefing, how to answer common questions, and how to say "please don't touch that" politely in three different ways.
The same principle applies wherever two languages coexist. In Canada, a shop in a French-speaking town that receives English-speaking visitors in summer faces the same situation in reverse. We recommend training for the job in the language the staff think in, then providing the phrases they will actually need at the counter. A few written answers to the ten most common questions are very effective, and they are the same answers that belong on the website, ideally as professional bilingual copy rather than a machine translation.
Why should training be documented?
Training that exists only in the owner's head disappears as soon as the owner's attention moves elsewhere. A few pages, some photos, a short video recorded on a phone or a checklist on the wall are sufficient. The format does not need to be polished; it needs to exist, so that the third person trained receives the same instruction as the first.
How can a small business retain good employees?
Pay and training keep employees for a while. Retaining them longer depends on factors that are harder to list, but several matter more than the rest:
- Assign real responsibility as soon as the person can handle it, and acknowledge good work openly.
- Support growth. For a dive centre, this means supporting the next certification. For a café, it might mean learning to place orders or taking over the Instagram account.
- Share positive reviews with the person who earned them. Guests on TripAdvisor often mention staff by name, and those reviews are worth reading aloud to the team.
- Listen when employees report that something is not working. They see problems before the owner does.
The last point deserves particular emphasis. Employees are the first to notice when the booking system is cumbersome, when the website shows the wrong hours, or when a guest has asked the same question four times in a week because nothing answers it. This is free research, and most owners never request it.
A good team costs more than an inexpensive one. It remains the best investment a small business can make, and our first four months of operation support that conclusion.