Ever wonder what a PADI Five Star IDC means? When choosing a dive center, it’s important to do your research and understand the meaning behind these names and acronyms.

Different scuba diving schools offer different services at different quality and price points. But what exactly should you look at while researching dive centers? The PADI 5 Star and PADI 5 Star IDC Center Ratings are important designations to let divers know what level of professionalism, training, and services to expect.

First, you will find the PADI Dive Center, who must:

Be a store accessible to the public and maintain business hours of at least 20 hours per week

Provide adequate facilities such as classrooms and confined water sites for instruction
Offer equipment maintenance services
Offer cylinder refills with air
Make sure dive boats have safety equipment, first aid kit, and emergency oxygen kit

A PADI Dive Center is the only level of PADI that can offer scuba courses from other agencies.

PADI defines the Five Star Dive Centers rating as representing dive shops that meet all PADI Dive Center standards, AND:

Reach a minimum number of certifications to show the experience of this dive school.
Are progressive dive shops that provide a full range of PADI scuba diving programs, equipment selection, and experience opportunities while encouraging aquatic environmental responsibility
Embrace the PADI System of diver education and offer regular continuing education programs to ensure divers have the opportunity to advance their skills and knowledge.
Most only offer scuba courses from PADI, except when this course is unavailable on PADI, like cave diving. Otherwise, this shop must be an exclusive PADI Dive Center
Are active in the community and are committed to providing customer satisfaction along with great dive experiences.

So, what’s the difference between a PADI Five Dive Center and a PADI Five Star IDC Center?

PADI Five Star Instructor Development Centers (Five Star IDCs) are dive centers that meet all PADI Five Star Dive Center standards, AND

Offer PADI instructor-level training
Have at least one PADI Course Director on the staff to guarantee the quality of the training and compliance with standardized standards.

These businesses excel in using the PADI System of diver education to introduce people to scuba diving, and then provide the continuing education that allows individuals to progress on to the dive professional level.

If your goal is to become a PADI Dive Instructor, Roatan Divers is a PADI Five Star IDC Center. You can learn more about our PADI Five Star IDC in Roatan here.

How to Choose a Dive Shop

Read Customer Reviews

Finding a PADI Five Star dive shop is the first step in researching for your upcoming diving experience, but don’t stop there. Reviews also matter as they come directly from the mouths of past divers.

Reviews present a unique opportunity to assess the quality and experience of the staff through an unbiased lens. Many reviews mention specific experiences, good and bad, with particular instructors that can help you decide who you’d like to learn or dive with. While scanning the reviews, look for keywords that most directly speak to your interests and needs, like “patient,” “macro dive,” “photography,” etc.

The two most important places to check out reviews for dive shops are Google and TripAdvisor.

Google Reviews uses a star rating system, where the best possible score is 5 stars. These reviews can be found via Google search results, or directly in Google Maps. Google is one of the first places people turn to for advice and to share their opinions, so it’s a great first stop when researching PADI dive centers and PADI Five Start IDCs.

TripAdvisor is a platform specifically designed for reviews about travel destinations, activities, and experiences. Their rating system is essentially a five-star system, but using their signature green circles. TripAdvisor reviews are especially appreciated for their travel-centric perspectives.

Consider Courses and Languages Available

All PADI Five Star Dive Centers should offer the same core courses, so focus your search on scuba schools that have the extras you are looking for. Take into account specialties, professional courses, and experiences or excursions.

Specialties:

All PADI Instructors are certified to teach core PADI courses but must be certified independently for each Specialty they wish to teach. That means that there can be a huge variety of specialties available from one dive shop to another. Even the dives available in the PADI Advanced Open Water course can be different from shop to shop, so if you have specific dives in mind, make sure to choose a PADI dive shop that offers your chosen specialties or adventure dives.

PADI Instructor Candidates at Roatan Divers

Professional Courses:

You need to choose a PADI IDC Center to take the Instructor Development Course (IDC), or to earn the Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT) or Staff Instructor ratings. As with specialties, make sure the IDC Center you choose has a PADI Course Director who can certify Specialty Instructors in your chosen specialties. It’s also important to choose a diving school that is conveniently located and easy to get to to reduce your burden during the intensive IDC days.

Technical Diving:

If you are an experienced tec diver or just starting out, you need a tech diving school to support you. Tec diving is safer when you have captains on board who are familiar with technical protocols. Students and newer tech divers should look for a school with more than one tech instructor on staff, or at minimum, where the Open Water Instructors are also tec divers. This makes tec divers safer and more fun! Curious about tec diving? Learn more here.

Languages:

We recommend taking any diving course in your native language whenever possible! We offer our core courses and experiences in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hebrew, Czech, and Russian.

Consider the Experiences and Excursions Available

Experienced divers who just want to fundive should focus their dive shop search around the experiences and excursions (sometimes called “Safaris”) offered. Some dive shops offer unique excursions daily, weekly, on-demand, or not at all. If you’re interested in excursions “off the beaten path,” make sure that you choose a dive center with multiple boats so your excursion won’t be influenced by the needs of other courses or experiences.

Diving in Roatan

Roatan Divers is a PADI Five Star IDC Center strategically located in the West End. You can reach nearly every notable dive site on the island within about 10 to 15 minutes of navigation to from our shop.

We have our own dock and 4 dive boats to accommodate our divers at every level and interest, but spots fill up fast. Be sure to book your trip in just a few clicks via our online booking form. You can let us know any courses you’re interested in and how long you plan to stay, and we will design the rest!

Roatan Divers is proud to offer a boutique diving experience to our clients, and we have been awarded a 2024 TripAdvisor Traveler’s Choice Award. Still not sure about booking with us? Please feel free to check out our nearly 1,500 TripAdvisor reviews, or reach out directly to ask your specific questions.

We look forward to being your Roatan dive center!

What Does the PADI Five Star Rating Mean?