A new organisation has taken up the challenge of representing dive professionals world-wide and across all agencies. The International Association of Dive Professionals (IADP), founded by dynamic dive entrepreneur Henri Hemmerechts, is a non-profit organisation that represents the interests of all diving professionals, regardless of country or affiliation.
IADP will act as the united voice of all diving professionals, promoting the industry as a whole without fear or favour. It also intends to provide tangible benefits for members such as insurance, legal advice and business consulting. IADP plans to set up cross-agency quality standards for diving businesses, to create a long term ecologically-sustainable industry.
“I am delighted that IADP is finally taking shape,” says Henri Hemmerechts, who has spent several years developing the Association. “The diving industry is so diverse, with hundreds of different agencies – some of them very small – that often don’t speak to each other. Professionals need a cross-agency organisation to represent everyone in the industry, to share best practices and raise standards internationally – and to challenge bad businesses. IADP will provide that.”
IADP’s first initiative will be to send a survey to all those who have expressed an interest in the organisation – over 4,000 people so far – to take the pulse of the industry. This will be sent out on 19th Nov 2014. Other surveys will follow in the coming months and years, so that IADP can keep abreast of changing circumstances and opinions within the industry. In order to achieve this and its other aims, IADP will be running a crowd-funding campaign during 2015.
IADP will be represented at DEMA by Paul Dollar, who can be contacted by phone on +1 707 495 2159.
