How Much Instructors Earn
How much do instructors earn in Thailand?
We get ask how much will an average scuba instructor earn while working in Thailand (Phuket, Koh Tao, Pattaya, Phi Phi, Koh Samui) after completing their IDC and IE, as its very common that Dive Instructors want to be able to work and live in Thailand. If you want to talk to a Course Director in Thailand that can answer all your questions and will be able to train you to be a Scuba Instructor with your PADI IDC then we recommend Marcel in Koh Tao.
There are many variable involved regarding how much you earn including the contract you have, if you are a full time employee, if you earn a salary and commission, or you work just on commission. The most popular is salary and commission, this normally works out well for all concerned.
Although new instructors, by definition do not have much experience they are in demand as:
New instructors will have more enthusiasm than an instructor who has been teaching for a number of years they will “never” get bored of teaching DSDs or OW courses. If and experienced instrutor was to teach a DSD tomorrow they would not have the same enthusiasm that a brand new instructor would.
New instructors are much easier to “mould” into the kind of employee that the Dive Center owner or Course Director wants in their dive center.
Once you pass your IDC and IE and get yourself out there you would stand a very good chance of getting work, obviously this depends on your personality and if your face fits.
On average on Phi Phi rent for a bungalow is about 6,000 – 8,000 THB per month for long term rental of a bungalow and full time instructors earn about 30- 40,000 THB.
If you looked for a 12 month average, and again it does depend on where you are working as Phi Phi Instructors typically earn more than Phuket Instructors but the cost of living is higher, You should be looking at 30,000 to 40,000 THB per month.
High season may be up round 40 to 60,000 THB. Low season maybe 25 to 30,000 depending how low and of course who you are working for and what your contract is.
What we would advise is to try and have a small stash of money to tide you over until you get known and the work starts coming in … you could quite literally get a job the day after your IE or it could take a couple of months for you to get known and trusted, it depends what you can offer the dive centre, who you are you and being in the right place at the right time.
Liveaboard pay
Liveaboards pay about 35,000 THB (again depends which company and a Tour Leaders may make 50 > 60,000 THB) but 35 is ok if you are not paying any rent and your food is paid for when you are on the boat. The Food on liveaboards is normally great and would really recommend this but you would probably need to have been working for 1 year to get the experience to work on Liveaboards. Find out more about scuba diver training.