Before defining a strategy, it's worth being honest that "omnichannel" already carries several different meanings inside this conversation. Here's where it's shown up so far.
One of three strategic pillars for PADI's modernization: "Omnichannel connections, meet divers everywhere they are." The research frames this as meeting divers in the places they already research and plan, search, Reddit, Google Maps, dive shops, rather than expecting them to start on padi.com.
Source: Border UX Customer Journey Readout, 1,097 survey responses across Potential Divers, Active Divers, Members and Pros (Apr 2026).
Click each point to see how it's been framed so far.
Rather than guess which definition of omnichannel applies, these are the questions that would pin it down. Answering these first would make everything downstream sharper.
Regardless of which definition of omnichannel PADI lands on, one structural fact sits underneath all of them: the dive shop, not the certifying agency, is who divers actually book with. That relationship is where the real leverage is.
Share of dive centers/instructors naming this agency as their primary certifying agency. Source: State of the Dive Industry (SOTI) survey, 2023 data.
On third-party travel and booking platforms (Viator, GetYourGuide, Airbnb Experiences, liveaboard sites), it's the dive shop that gets listed and booked, not the certifying agency, for every agency including PADI. PADI is also already integrated into Dive Shop 360, the dominant dive-shop POS platform, alongside SSI and SDI. So the erosion in PADI's primary-agency share isn't PADI being out-maneuvered on some digital channel it's missing. It's shops making an ordinary switching decision (cost, curriculum, relationship) at the one point of contact that actually matters. Any omnichannel strategy that doesn't address the shop relationship directly is solving the wrong layer.
This is supporting evidence, not the main story. Each of these is a data point worth knowing, not a reason to build a PADI-versus-anyone strategy.
However PADI answers the discovery questions above, the sequencing logic holds: score channels by whether existing people and assets can do the work, not by reach alone.
X: incremental resource cost. Y: attribution directness. Size: diver demand signal. Click a channel to see the full read.
Tap or click any bubble. Toggle the legend to isolate a tier.