If you’re planning a dive vacation, you may be deciding whether to spend it at a resort or on a liveaboard. The good news is that you can’t go wrong! But that still doesn’t make it an easy choice — so here are the advantages of each to help you out.

Liveaboards

• Head out to less-visited spots
• Can get to deeper waters
• Cover more ground
• Offer lots of dives
• Minimize both equipment hassles and waiting around time
• Create communities
• Are all-inclusive

A liveaboard can travel further off the beaten path than a dive resort boat. This means that you’re likely to see spots that are more unspoiled, and there may be fewer other boats and divers around.

Liveaboards can generally also head out to deeper waters — so if you like creatures that live out in the blue, this is a great way to find them.

Going Further & Deeper

Because a liveaboard is often on the move, you can dive more of a given area than you can from a resort — you’ll simply cover more ground (or water, as the case may be). So if you want to see more of a particular region, a liveaboard will help you do that.

You’re also likely to get more dives on a liveaboard, since there’s nothing else to do! You’ll likely have three or four dives a day, every day — so if you’re sailing for a week, you can rack up a lot of time out seeing critters.

Low-Fuss Living

One of the best things about being on a liveaboard is that you don’t have to fuss too much with equipment. On most boats, the staff will assist you in getting ready and in managing some of your gear when you return. Plus, since all of your entries will be off of the dive boat or a Zodiac, you don’t have to carry your equipment! I am a huge fan of not carrying.

Another great liveaboard feature is the fact that when you’re done with your dive, there’s no waiting around. The minute you’re out of your wetsuit, you can head to your cabin for a shower and a lie-down.

A liveaboard is also great if you want an instant community. You’re going to be on a relatively small boat with anywhere from twenty to fifty people, so there are lots of opportunities to make friends as you eat together, join for briefings, or just sit out on deck looking over the horizon.

Liveaboards really are giant group activities — so if bonding with strangers isn’t your thing, then a liveaboard might be rough. You also have to hope that you’re going to click with the small group of people on board. But when it works, a liveaboard is a wonderful way to expand your horizons as you exchange tips with and learn from other divers.

Finally, a nice bonus of liveaboards is that — with the possible exception of alcohol and equipment rental — they’re all-inclusive. This means no fuss, no bother when you’re trying to calculate costs.

Dive Resorts

• Offer more flexibility
• Have more to do when you’re not diving
• Give you more space
• Provide a wider range of food and accommodation choices
• Have more rental equipment options
• Can accommodate new divers
• Are often better for snorkelers and other non-divers
• Don’t make you seasick

Dive resorts offer more diving flexibility. A dive resort can be all diving, all the time, but it doesn’t have to be — you have more freedom to create your own schedule, especially since you may be paying for each dive à la carte. If you don’t want to dive, it’s easy to bow out and do something else (or nothing at all). Dive resorts are great for beach people!

Also, many dive resorts also give you choices of where to dive on a given day, so you may have multiple options for where to go and what to see.

Dive resorts definitely have more to do when you’re not diving, whether it’s just taking a walk along the beach or heading out on a more spectacular excursion.

Resort Living

Everything will be larger at a dive resort: your room, the dining and hanging out facilities, and the space to walk around. If you like to spread out, a dive resort is definitely your best bet.

More space means that it’s easy to get away if you want some alone time. And if you like to meet people, dive resorts are often larger than liveaboards, so you have the opportunity to meet a wide group of folks — and to pick and choose from them — if you want to reach out and make friends.

This can vary from place to place, but in general, a dive resort will have a greater variety of food and accommodation options. You may be able to opt, for example, for a room with or without air conditioning, or for a room with multiple beds. And there’s a good chance that the buffet at a dive resort will have a larger spread.

I appreciate that dive resorts generally have a wider variety of rental equipment options. If you’re on a boat, once you’ve set sail, you can’t switch out your rented BCD or regulator if you don’t like it. At a dive resort, you have the opportunity to try things, see how they fit, and then make swaps if needed.

Dive resorts are far better if you have non-divers along. In addition to offering land-based activities, dive resorts pretty much always allow for playing in the water. If there’s a house reef, snorkelers can enjoy the same sorts of underwater attractions as their diving brethren.

You can also learn to dive at most dive resorts (whereas to get on most any liveaboard, you already need to be dive certified).

Finally, dive resorts are a better option for anyone with seasickness issues. You’ll likely still be going out on small boats to visit different dive sites, but your time on the boats will be quite limited — and then you’ll be happily back on land!

Both liveaboards and dive resorts are fabulous, so there’s no right answer to which one you should choose. But if I had to summarize the advantages, I would say that a liveaboard is best if you want to dive, dive, dive, and a resort is best if you want the opportunity to do other things. Once you hit the water, you’ll be a happy diver either way!

Looking for a Few Great Places to Dive?

• Don’t miss the clownfish and giant clams of Indonesia’s Bunaken National Marine Park.
• For beginners, Bali’s Amed has gentle waters with big rewards.
• Caribbean diving trip on your agenda? Bonaire‘s shore dives offer easy access and clear blue seas.
• And no list would feel complete without the pristine reefs and endless fish of Raja Ampat.