The world’s largest purpose-driven scuba diving organization is amongst leading brands celebrated for their revolutionary ideas that are making a difference for our shared blue planet.
PADI® (Professional Association of Diving Instructors®) has been named to Fast Company’s 2024 Most Innovative Companies list, which is an extraordinary compendium of organizations shaping the future of business, culture, environment, and strategy.
For the last 16 years, this list has set the standard for excellence in business by showcasing the forefront of innovation in both new companies and established brands, as well as newly reimagined products, services and strategies that are instrumental in building purpose-driven innovation.
“Our list of the Most Innovative Companies is both a comprehensive look at the innovation economy and a snapshot of the business trends that defined the year,” said Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan. “We saw extraordinary innovation across the board in 2023, but we also saw a handful of clear patterns: the growing footprint and impact of AI, the triumphant return of live events, and great leaps forward in climate tech. We face daunting challenges on many fronts, but the solutions we celebrate in MIC give me plenty of hope about the future.”
This year, PADI was ranked #5 in the Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality category and join world-renowned brands like Hopper, Delta Airlines and Intrepid Travel to this year’s annual list. The world’s largest purpose-driven scuba diving organization has been recognized for its commitment to empowering its membership of 6,600 PADI Dive Centers and 128,000 PADI Professionals and over 30 million certified divers to create positive ocean change through a range of innovative programs. This includes the newly established PADI Eco Center™ credentials that launched on Earth Day 2023 and uses the United Nations Environment Program and the Reef-World Foundation’s Green Fins program to elevate our planet’s most environmentally committed dive operators.
“PADI is committed to doing our part in protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030,” says Dr. Drew Richardson, CEO and President of PADI Worldwide. “This is fueled by creating innovative partnerships, mobilizing our PADI Mission Hub Members, re-envisioning the way people travel and encouraging daily changes we all can make for a better – and healthier – ocean planet.”
In 2022, PADI supported a Green Fins study that identified dive travelers wanted to make an impact with their travel, with 75% of respondents willing to pay more for regenerative stays and experiences. However, 85% of respondents also indicated it was difficult to find validated sustainable operators they could trust.
“To support the growing demand for regenerative diving and to assist our global membership in taking constructive local action to protect their surrounding natural ecosystems, we launched the PADI Eco Center credential to make dive tourism a force for good and allow consumers to confidently put their tourism dollars towards sustainable and regenerative businesses,” explains Richardson.
“The PADI cultural diaspora is, by definition, a juggernaut- we are a force for good. Consequently, no constructive personal action is insignificant and we are all empowered to make a difference by taking action. Collectively, such individual actions, like snorkeling or scuba diving with a PADI Eco Center, can scale into measurable and positive ocean change. PADI’s community of ocean torchbearers are a growing force that will scale the power of one person exponentially across the planet. That is why we are innovating new ways to set into motion a movement to restore and protect the ocean, both locally and globally.”
PADI Eco Centers and its community of ocean-minded divers have:
- Protected over 100 endangered species of sharks and rays, now listed on CITES (Convention of International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)
- Established the largest underwater marine debris citizen science database through PADI’s Dive Against Debris program, which has enlisted divers to remove and report over 2.3 million pieces of plastic from the ocean
- Adopted over 2,000 Adopt the Blue dive sites to monitor and support becoming Marine Protected Areas (MPAs),
- Released more than 35,000 entangled marine animals from human-induced marine debris to live and perhaps reproduce their species for another day.
With over 100 PADI Eco Centers now accredited in 32 countries within the first year of the program, PADI is working to have over 10% of its membership base accredited by 2030. The growing popularity and success of the program also led to PADI Eco Centers recently being named the #2 travel trend for 2024 by Conde Nast Traveller.
“The future of our shared blue planet has never been more dependent on our innovation, our decisions and our actions to prioritize ocean life support, as humanity and the ocean are both vulnerable and both co-dependent,” continues Richardson. “The honor of being named to Fast Company’s 2024 Most Innovative Companies list further proves that we all must be innovators to accomplish our shared goal of restoring ourselves, our relationship with each other and this shared blue planet we all call home.”
PADI will be further honored at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies Gala on May 16 in New York City. This event celebrates the Most Innovative Companies honorees and provides an inside look at cutting-edge business trends and what it takes to innovate in 2024.
