The Economic Value of Scuba Diving Tourism

Asia has been known as the world's best scuba diving locations, the number of visitors, such as Indonesia, has unexpectedly grown in recent years. Those places are therefore also developing with restaurants, hotels of luxury, bars, accommodation, and transportation sectors, producing a healthy tourism growth.

Diving is an important element of the marine tourism sector. Its training became marketed and internationalized in the 1930s, but it has grown rapidly since 1967 and now constitutes a multibillion-dollar tourism business worldwide. Scuba diving, widely regarded as safe and cheap, is one of the world's fastest-growing leisure activities.

Due to its popularity, scuba diving is currently practiced in many parts of the world. According to FMI's study, diving tourist revenues increased at a CAGR of 6.1% between 2015 and 2019.

In 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic taken a toll on the tourist sector, with countries enacting travel restrictions and stay-at-home policies to stem the virus's spread. The worldwide tourism sector's market size fell in 2020 compared to the previous year, reaching 1.54 trillion US dollars. This year's market for this industry is forecast to expand to 1.7 trillion dollars in 2021.

There is prediction of an increased interest in scuba diving and in rising numbers for new tour and travel start-ups in emerging countries. From 2020 to 2030, the Future Market Insights (FMI) predicted that the market in diving tourism will grow at CAGR of 5.9%.

Tourists from all across the globe spend enormous sums of money to visit coral reefs or iconic large creatures like sharks and manta rays. 

Let’s take muck diving and coral reef tourism, for example.

• Muck diving is a unique form of scuba diving that may be little known about, and it is growing in popularity. It seeks out uncommon, cryptic organisms that are rarely observed on coral reefs.  It is worth more than USD$ 150 million in Indonesia and the Philippines combined, employs over 2200 people, and draws over 100,000 divers each year. Studies have shown that divers involved in muck diving tourism are experienced, received higher education, have high incomes, and are prepared to pay for the conservation of species important to the business. 
• Coral reef tourism draws visitors from all over the world and generates revenue, including foreign exchange profits, in more than 100 countries and territories. Approximately 30% of the world's reefs are valuable in the tourist industry, with a total worth of over US$36 billion, accounting for roughly 9% of all coastal tourism value in coral reef nations. Understanding the entire worth of coral reefs in terms of tourism, as well as the geographical distribution of these values, is a powerful motivator for reef management.

Diving tourism is closely linked with the world coral reef as one of the main instances of a single natural tourist ecosystem. In more than 100 nations and territories, coral reefs attract visitors from outside and produce profits, including international trade.

Understanding how the overall value of coral reefs is regionally distributed among visitors provides an essential incentive to ensure sustainable reef management and how diving tourism may enhance its position in the travel market.

To conclude, scuba diving is a popular tourist attraction that is expected to continue to grow, generating a billion-dollar industry around the world. Scuba diving tourism has the potential to be a long-term source of revenue for developing countries, and its global economic significance to the travel industry should not be underestimated.