It has now been eight months since any foreign guest came to Nusa Ceningan, since March, and no return date has been set. The borders remain closed to tourists. Discussions about Bali reopening to foreign visitors in September did not lead anywhere, and no one in our circle is planning around a new date.
What a dive centre retains at this stage is its relationships: former guests spread across dozens of countries, divers who took their first course with us, friends of the centre. It is a community built over five years of boat trips, weekly beach cleanups and time spent on the reef.
The central question is this: how do you keep that community from drifting away when there is nothing to offer it?
Should you communicate with customers when you have nothing to sell?
Yes. Most businesses communicate with customers only when they have a request: a promotion, a new product, a booking reminder. When there is nothing to sell, they stop communicating, often out of concern about disturbing people.
This approach works against the goal. It is precisely when you cannot offer any reason to buy that you most need customers to remember you. The most effective messages right now are those that ask for nothing: what is happening on the island, the state of the reef with no boats on it, news from the team, a turtle, a note saying that guests are missed.
A regular email newsletter is the most suitable tool, more so than social media. Your list belongs to you. No algorithm determines whether your message reaches someone who dived with you in 2018. People read emails from places they value, even long ones, provided the content is sincere and does not try to sell in every paragraph.
The frequency can be lower than expected. A reliable monthly email is more effective than a weekly one for three weeks followed by silence until spring. Customers notice silence more than frequency.
Content can be found in the business's daily life: a completed repair, a species observed on a survey dive, a team member's birthday, a thank-you to someone who sent a kind message. It does not need to be news. It must be authentic and reflect the voice of the business rather than that of a brochure.
How can you actively involve your community?
By offering it an activity. This is the role of the Education Centre. We launched edu.ceningandivers.com in April with free conservation workshops, Project AWARE courses and PADI eLearning, activities people can genuinely take part in from wherever they are. In June, PADI's Pros blog wrote about Ceningan Divers and its conservation work, which provided welcome support during an unusual period and gives an accurate picture of the centre.
A workshop is a modest initiative, but it turns an admirer into a participant. Someone who spends an evening learning about coral or plastic in the ocean is no longer just waiting for their next holiday: they are involved. The conservation work (Green Fins membership, citizen science with the Marine Megafauna Foundation, the no single-use plastic rule) gives people a sense of belonging that goes beyond a booking.
Any small business can find its own version of this approach. A garden centre can organize a seed swap this winter. A bakery can share a recipe and invite customers to post the results. A bookstore can host an online reading club. What matters is that your community takes part in a shared activity, with your business at its centre. Reading your posts is not enough to sustain interest for a year, and likely not for a month.
Let customers help if they wish
People attached to a business want to help when it is going through a difficult period, and many offer directly. Have an answer ready: buy a voucher for next year, take a paid course, share a post with a friend or leave a review of a past trip. Each of these options is more useful to them than a reply such as "we're fine, thanks", which gives them no way to act on their support.
Why support your staff visibly?
On an island like Nusa Ceningan, staff are not simply a line on a spreadsheet. The island is small and families are connected. When tourism stops, there is no other work, and many people have returned to seaweed farming and fishing, the way the island lived before the divers came.
Guests are aware of this. People who have dived with a crew they liked ask about the crew first, before asking about the business. The way a business treats its team during a shutdown is therefore not a private matter: it is part of the story the community hears, and it influences whether they want to return.
The specific measures taken for each person are a matter of privacy and are not content. As a general rule, however, if you are providing food, housing or part of the pay for your team through a difficult period, it is appropriate to say so. The purpose is not self-promotion, but to reassure those who care about your team and to show those who want to help where their contribution goes.
Who sustains whom during a crisis?
The business is often described as the one keeping its community going through the pandemic. Our experience indicates the opposite: the community keeps the business going. The people who keep reading, taking courses, asking about the team and planning a trip they cannot take yet are the ones who will give reopening its meaning.
This principle applies to any small business, not only dive centres. Savings obviously help get through a hard season. However, a few hundred customers who are genuinely attached to your business are worth more than a larger financial cushion, and those customers do not appear the week you need them. That relationship is built years in advance, gradually.