Aquaventure PADI 5star Dive Center - Scuba Diving Maldives

I had an amazing time with this scuba diving company. They were very professional and the costumed all the dives to my picky needs. I really enjoyed diving with Chirio, a Japanese lady, who is very very safe, and she will make your dives very enjoyable. Roman the another instructor is very good too.

Best place to do diving in Maldives. We saw so many wildlife and beautiful reefs! We had the opportunity to see Mantas and even sharks!

I am an experienced diver and have dove in Raja Ampat, Komodo, Sipadan and have a good pulse on what diving in Asia is like and can say this company excels at providing great equipment, knowledge of the underwater environment and well trained staff for you dives. Never once was I concerned or questioned their judgments. The pre dive briefings were extensive. The boat captain knows the water currents well and there is very little wait time on the surface of the water to get back into the boat. Thank you Marc and entire staff for the fun, friendly and safe dives. We will be back. Until then, happy bubbles!

First of all I would like to make it clear that nobody has instructed or asked me to write this review. The main reason was the unbelievable arrogance Marc Kouwenberg, the manager of Aquaventure has replied on other negative reviews - clearly reflecting the same attitude we experienced when we visited him. He seems to be a person who is unable to handle criticism and healthy competition. I am a technical scuba instructor with over 2.600 dives in 15 years all around the world. I have been visiting the Maldives regularly since 2005, on earlier occasions I had been diving in the Addu atoll on liveaboards. Our small group of 4 had booked 7 days in Addu atoll just before Christmas 2019. I had contacted the owner of Aquaventure for details and prices in August 2019 via e-mail and Whatsapp. Marc was the only one to offer us Nitrox on this local island. After our earlier communication Marc sent me an e-mail on December 16th, asking when to pick us up from the guesthouse. I replied on Whatsapp that we will visit his dive centre in the afternoon, as we did later with my dive buddy. It was easy to realise that the centre and equipment has seen better days. Marc, the European owner immediately pursued us to bring our equipment from the guesthouse, but he "forgot" to mention that Nitrox was not available despite his promise. Only when I went to check the compressors and tanks he admitted that "just right now" there is no oxygen to charge Nitrox. If you read the other comments you will understand that this is not true. Marc offered us a discount due to the fact that he could not provide Nitrox. During our discussion Marc also mentioned that Nitrox is not useful as due to currents on some dives they have to go down to 45+ m depth. For me as a technical diver there is not much to comment on this practice, than to mention that recreational scuba diving with single tanks is strictly limited to 40 m. This should be more than clear at PADI 5 Star facility. After I told Marc that the main reason for choosing him and his fixed price policy over other offers was actually the fact that he promised us Nitrox, he became very arrogant. He told us to go then and choose the other operator and he let us know that at Aquaventure we are paying for 15 years and 20.000 dives of experience. These number seem quite exaggerated to me as this would mean more than 1.300 dives per year and in average more than 4 dives every single day... Since Addu is a very small atoll with only 4 channels, one wreck and a few dive spots on the outer reefs it takes a few months for any well trained dive professional to know all the dive sites. So I can find nothing that does make Aquaventure "better" than any other decent dive operation with experienced staff. Especially because Marc had just introduced us to his young colleague Roman, who was supposed to dive with us and who has one year of experience at the Maldives according to the website, therefore I mentioned to Marc that I might have more experience in diving than Roman. I am not a big fan of the fixed rates that are negotiated between operators on the island as Marc had mentioned. This is distorting competition and completely against the interests of the customers. I guess that the main reason for Marc's attitude towards us was the fact that we did not blindly buy his rates but we wanted to see what we are getting for our money. I can only advise everyone to LOOK AROUND before committing yourself. You might have to stand a fight with Marc and his staff to get your equipment back, if you decide that you do not like the service (please read the details in the Tripadvisor ratings)...

We went diving with aquaventure 6 times (3days twice in the morning) It was great! The first day we signed and did the paper stuff as always. After that we prepared the equipment with Chihiro. She told us everyhing about diving in the Addu and gave us some good food advises on the island. We went diving with Roman a spanish dive instructor. He is really relaxed and we spent a good time with him on the boat and while diving. We went twice to dive manta point and saw always more than 9 mantas! we ve also seen the small and the big cave with a nice wall and nice corals! big fish in the blue and some nice stuff at the wall like turtles, batfish and the usuall stuff. the boat is big and there is enough space for a lot of divers. the crew is very nice and they always help you with the equipment. thank you for this nice experience with aquaventure!