Claudia Lutrop and Dirk Werner-Lutrop
Claudia Lutrop and Dirk Werner-Lutrop, the founders and directors of Diversion Dive Travel got motivated to start a dive travel agency after working as dive instructors in Papua New Guinea and on the Great Barrier Reef. “We met so many overseas tourist who were not happy with their dive trip because nobody back home told them about the available options so they could compare and make a suitable choice. With our specific knowledge about the dive destinations we were able to provide people with better information before they travel. ” says Dirk. Since 1995 their website diversionOZ.com has been the major source of information for scuba divers around the world. Diversion Dive travel started using the internet very early and set the standard for online travel as the Internet slowly developed and matured. “Our primary focus was overseas clients travelling to our region. The internet helped us to get the word out.” For the first 10 years Diversion Dive Travel concentrated all their marketing on their biggest source of travellers: Europe and the USA. “The secret to delivering customer satisfaction is to match customer expectation to the experience they will receive on their vacation” says Nina Joost, a senior consultant with Diversion Dive Travel. “With our information available to the whole world, we got noticed at home as well and slowly built up a loyal clientele in Australia”, says Nina. Most of their Australian clients are from the capital cities and hardly ever see their consultants in the Diversion office in person. This does not seem to deter them. “The fact that we rarely meet our clients in person forces us to be very clear and specific about our products. The combination of e-mail, phone and internet is a great tool and people seem to like this a lot”.
