Diver offers Covid pearls
AFTER A LIFETIME IN TOURISM AND LEISURE, DIVE QUEENSLAND CHAIRMAN TERRY CUMMINS HAS SOME WISE WORDS FOR LOCAL OPERATORS, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO RECOVERING FROM THE PANDEMIC
BETWEEN regular dive trips to the reef and undertaking a PhD thesis in his 70s, the chairman of Queensland’s premier dive tourism body is a living example of how to keep expertise and talent on the ball.
Terry Cummins, OAM, took on the role as chairman of Dive Queensland in 2017 and was re-elected to the position for a two-year term two months ago.
As an avid diver since he was 10 with a career in the industry spanning more than 50 years, he has worked hard to keep abreast of the trends.
“I’m in my early 70s, but I act more like a 50-year-old,” he said.
“You have to in my field, you can’t retire your brain. You need potential clients to know you have information and you need to know the trends across different age groups.”
In 2016, Mr Cummins started work on a Business and Informatics PhD at CQU Cairns and is expected to graduate later this year.
It’s an investigation into the major factors that impact the long-term sustainability of recreational scuba diving tourism in Cairns.
For the project, he inter
A LOT OF COMPANIES ARE MAKING MISTAKES BY USING COVID-19 TO RETIRE OLDER EMPLOYEES — BECAUSE THEY WILL LOSE THEIR BRAINS TRUST TERRY CUMMINS, DIVE QLD
viewed more than 500 people, from ground-level dive operators to national and international industry figures.
In applying his expertise to the COVID-19 crisis, he has been advising clients to tread lightly around getting rid of older employees.
“I believe a lot of companies are making mistakes by using COVID-19 to retire older employees — because they will lose their brains trust,” he said.
“They’re the ones who help the younger people in the industry because they’ve been through it and learned from their mistakes in the past.
“It’s a two-way process as well. Having children in their 20s, I’ve got a resource I can sit down with, have intelligent conversations and learn from, look at what they’re buying and how they think.”
Mr Cummins said the biggest message he had for dealing with COVID-19 was to not let it distract from problems that were already there.
“What people are witnessing is one of the biggest disasters that ever hit the world, but you only had to walk down the street before then to see that Cairns had issues with empty shops,” he said.
“My hope is that after COVID-19 people don’t go back to the same old business models before. The lifeblood of tourism is in innovation and it’s fair to say it’s lacking here.
“From my expertise in
Cairns, getting out of the plane and walking across an open tarmac with no palm trees — it’s not welcoming to tourists.
“A lot of travel today is about word of mouth; it’s important for people to have that first impression.
“Having a new domestic terminal isn’t enough. We need to beautify those first impressions because it’s a major killer.”
Mr Cummins joined PADI in 1972 and helped establish its presence in Australia, forming PADI Australia Pty Ltd in 1982. He became managing director of Pro Dive Cairns when it opened in 1983, and was appointed director of operations and later CEO of PADI Australia until 1999.
From 1999 to 2012 he served as vice-president following PADI Australia’s integration with New Zealand and Singapore into PADI Asia Pacific.
When he retired in 2012 and became a consultant for the marine tourism industry, Cairns was a natural fit to take up residence.
“The biggest area (where) diving tourism takes place is Cairns, which is still the biggest conglomeration of diving activities in this country,” Mr Cummins said.
“I moved to Cairns permanently in 2014 — which not only attracted me because of its importance to the industry but because of the things you can do there outside of diving.”
In addition to diving, he is also a keen adventurer and photographer and enjoys taking regular four-wheel driving trips to the bush with his wife Cathie.
“It all comes back to that love of adventure for me,” Mr Cummins said.
“It also ties in to how I look at business — someone who is passionate is far easier to train than someone who just wants to go into business.
“You could train formally or go through the university of life, but if you don’t have the passion, your chance of survival isn’t good.”
HAVING A NEW DOMESTIC TERMINAL ISN’T ENOUGH. WE NEED TO BEAUTIFY THOSE FIRST IMPRESSIONS BECAUSE IT’S A MAJOR KILLER TERRY CUMMINS, DIVE QLD