An interview with Richard Thomas, owner of two International Scuba locations in the Dallas area and a DEMA Board member about how his staff prepare for the DEMA show.
ARE YOU ALL SET for the upcoming 2026 DEMA Show in New Orleans that is taking place November 3 to 6 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center? Are travel and hotel arrangements booked for you and your staff? Are key meetings with important contacts scheduled? Do you have your hour-by-hour itinerary mapped out as well as “before and after show hours” networking opportunities planned on your schedule?
If not, now is the time to get busy with all those items. Successful dive centers are already scheduling valuable meeting times with the 500+ exhibitors, and the time slots may fill up. Hotels and flights book up quickly, as well as valuable face-to-face meeting times with the company representatives you need to meet to help your dive center grow and prosper.
Travel and Staff Assignments: During major tradeshows like the DEMA Show, hotels often charge premium rates because of ‘supply and demand,’ with over 7,000 attendees coming in from around the world plus the staff of over 500 exhibitors, which could mean several thousand more people looking for rooms within the vicinity of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center along the Mississippi River. The DEMA Show has reserved blocks of rooms in five hotels in New Orleans, but only one will have scheduled shuttle service, so getting to and from the convention center each day needs to be included in your travel plans. There are many other hotel options in the area, but all will require commuting plans, as well as spending time searching for available and appropriate lodging.
How many staff from your dive center are you bringing to the show? Are you registering them and helping them with their accommodations and/or flights, or are they on their own? If you are bringing key staff members with you, then who do you have assigned to manage and cover your dive center’s daily operations while your group is in New Orleans?
“We encourage our dive and retail staff to attend the show,” said Richard Thomas, owner of two International Scuba locations in the Dallas area and a DEMA Board member. But those staff members who attend must follow a “code of conduct” at the show; always be professional, wear dive center logoed gear, and have assignments to attend and cover seminars, training sessions, and educational programs related to their staff function at the shop. Thomas said that one or two dive center staff members cannot cover everything going on during the four-day show, so deep planning in advance is required in preparation for the show, and everyone develops a schedule of the tasks needed each day they are there. He added that he emphasizes to his staff that they can’t go out and “cut their own deals” with exhibitors while representing his dive centers and recommended that staff shouldn’t be issued “buyer’s badges” unless they are authorized to do so for the dive center.
In addition to having printed business cards and utilizing DEMA Show badge “QR” codes for post-show contact information, dive center staff can take advantage of electronic business cards (that don’t run out), allowing people they meet to have a face (picture on the electronic business card) and contact details, with the ability to add notes and follow-up details to this electronic format. Attendees can share these digital cards either through QR codes in their mobile wallet apps or NFC (near field communication) taps that transfer your details instantly to the other person’s phone software. This includes the iPhone’s AirDrop feature or Android’s Bluetooth transfer service.
Filling out your show schedule: Thomas, a long-time veteran of attending DEMA Shows, said he prepares a spreadsheet months in advance of the tradeshow of meeting times with key industry and manufacturer representatives as early in the show as possible. He said that his product line representatives often will try to set up meetings with him prior to the show, if possible, because meeting times during the tradeshow are valuable commodities that must be portioned out to key accounts and scheduled far in advance of the show. Dive professionals who show up at the show wanting time with manufacturer executives or key travel decision makers without appointments are often requested to set up appointments after the show is over, losing valuable face-to-face time.
Setting up meetings at the exhibitor’s booth is important, Thomas said, so that any new product samples will be readily available for you to inspect, as well as presentations set up at the booth. It is important, though, that a dive retailer be prepared as well for the meeting with a list of meeting topics that include supply chain issues or holes in your inventory that need to be addressed. If there is nothing new that hasn’t been addressed by your representative previously, then make the meeting short because your time and their time are valuable during the show.
But the one important factor of any tradeshow is ‘relationship,’ Thomas said. Besides meeting product line executives, he said he wants to meet and shake hands with the people at the show that he has dealt with throughout the year over the phone, whether they are customer service representatives, accounting personnel, or whoever he is in contact with that attends the show because, “Once you shake hands and associate a face with a voice, then those folks will probably go out of their way in the future to make things happen for you,” he said.
Group travel meetings: Travel wholesalers and destination resorts always put out “DEMA Specials” to get your group trip business, and many extend these special discount offers prior to the actual DEMA Show to lock up travel plans with dive retailers before they can see competitors’ offerings at the show. For extended details on planning dive trips at the DEMA Show, please see online the September 2025 issue of Scuba Diving Industry Magazine and the article “Planning your DEMA Show Travel Appointments.”
While there will be many deals and special offers for trying out new travel locations or going back to favored ones, Thomas said he has participated in many of his dive center’s group trips over the years to see what is important to them. He said choosing his trips boils down to one main value factor – “relationships.” Thomas explained that he has found that once many travel salespeople sign you up on a group trip, support for your group almost disappears, so he plans his future trips with companies he has developed a relationship with over the years, as they go above and beyond to ensure his group’s needs are met and any issues that arise during the trip are remedied quickly. He said his main group trips are booked five years out, and during the show his team is looking for smaller “fill-in” trips to try out.
“It is important to get to meet and know the management of your destination at the show and develop a relationship with them to ensure your trip goes off successfully,” Thomas said, adding again that you are associating a face with a name and vice versa so that the destination’s management works well with you prior to your group’s arrival.
Meeting with Training Agencies: Scuba classes are a major part of any dive center’s income and success, so scheduling time with your center’s representatives and regional directors is important to ensure your center is on track with the training opportunities currently offered by the agencies and any new programs coming soon that may put an added boost in your profits. Thomas suggested that in addition to your main 45-minute to one-hour meeting with the agency, also try to schedule some “mini-meetings” with some department managers, like marketing, to discover new ways to promote your business in your specific area, but warned to come prepared to the meeting with your specific needs of yours that they can address then or follow up with after the show.
Keeping up with continuing education is important for dive staff members, and there are usually important update sessions offered at the show on key issues like standards, risk management, and other key factors that ensure dive-training staff are all conducting the same agency procedures and processes. The same holds true for retail staff keeping up with customer relationship management (CRM) and point-of-sale (POS) software updates or training sessions.
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The DEMA Show also hosts multiple manufacturers’ equipment repair clinics where dive center technicians get updates and training on maintenance, repair, and servicing procedures for those product lines. In addition to show dates, these clinics are sometimes offered on days prior to the DEMA Show opening due to the time required for the training. Thomas said that he tries to bring all his technicians to the show for repair process updates and training. He estimates that dive gear servicing accounts for approximately 25 percent of his center’s business in the Dallas area and has even recently converted a former classroom into an additional dive gear servicing area.
New Products and Useful Seminars: In addition to meeting with his current product line manufacturers, Thomas said he schedules time to check out new products and manufacturers that may prove to be a fit for his dive center’s product inventory. This is also true for new travel destination booths. But, Thomas warns, don’t get drawn into trying to walk up and down the show aisles because you often get bogged down and lose valuable time. Instead, he said he researches ahead of the show which new products and destinations that might be right for his dive center by studying the DEMA Show website and the New Product Showcase, which lists and describes the product offerings.
On the DEMA Show website, Thomas said he also goes to the Floor Plan section and reviews the list of exhibitors. By clicking on the exhibitor’s name, you get a short bio of what services or products the exhibitor offers. Thomas said that prior to attending the show, he creates a spreadsheet for each day of what meetings he has and what new products or destinations he wants to check out and goes directly to their booths instead of just wandering around.
“Before we go to the DEMA Show I meet with my staff and try to assess what holes in our inventory we have to fill and what group travel needs we need to book,” Thomas said, adding that his research on the show website is directly related to accomplishing those goals by using his floor time effectively. He said he also asks his staff and people he trusts at the show, “Hey, what’s new that looks good?”
The same holds true for researching which seminars to attend during the show, whether they are DEMA-sponsored seminars or exhibitor-sponsored sessions. These educational sessions are already posted on the website, so you can select which ones are the most important to your business and put them on your show schedule to attend. Thomas said he transfers his pre-show spreadsheet over to the DEMA Show Mobile App on his phone to keep up with his schedule and review the floor plan map to determine his best route from booth to booth.
Pre-Show Hours Activities: While the DEMA Show doors open at 10 AM each day, there are many pre-show-hour events and activities each day for additional networking opportunities and education. One such event is the Wednesday DEMA Member Update breakfast that starts at 8 AM and the new DEMA President and CEO, Julie A. Fabsik-Swarts, will provide an update on the direction of DEMA and current demographics of the organization. Show attendees are also entertained an hour ahead of the show opening at the main entrance by Scuba Radio’s “Greg the Divemaster” and his crew with quizzes, contests, and giveaways provided by show exhibitors.
Thomas said he spends his breakfast time reviewing and responding to communications with his dive centers’ staff both back in the Dallas area and with the staff at the show. He said wireless reception within convention halls has improved over the years, so he has no problems receiving staff texts, emails, or phone calls about important matters during the day.
Post-Show Hours Activities and Dinners: Near the end of each day at the show, there are a number of exhibitor “Happy Hour” celebrations at their booths, including a DEMA-sponsored event each day where attendees and exhibitors can network in a more casual setting. After the show closes at 6 PM, there are several organizations that host parties each night and provide an excellent opportunity to network with industry professionals and meet up with old friends in a relaxed atmosphere.
Since the DEMA Show is a worldwide event, it is a time when friends you have made across the globe can meet up and make plans to have dinner to catch up with each other and discuss future opportunities in a more intimate setting. Thomas said this is a great opportunity to keep relationships flourishing, which will benefit both parties in the years to come.
A successful DEMA Show for a dive center requires a lot of pre-show research, an understanding of what needs your dive center must fill at the show, and a willingness to meet new people and businesses that may develop prosperous relationships in the future of your business. That requires hard work and preparation from early in the morning until late in the evening each day of the show.
An appropriate phrase (called the 7 Ps) to help dive center managers have a successful DEMA Show is “prior proper planning prevents a pitifully poor performance.” The show only happens once a year so make the best of this opportunity to improve your business.
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