Blue Rides Bundles Dive Insurance Into Bookings

Blue Rides, a newly launched booking platform for liveaboard scuba diving trips, announced on October 19, 2026 that every reservation made through its site will include DAN Short Term Dive Protection at no additional cost. The company says the move responds to a gap in adventure travel, where remote, expensive dive trips are often sold with minimal support when something goes wrong. The platform pairs that built-in insurance with direct access to staff who understand diving.

Why Insurance Comes Standard

Liveaboards carry divers on multi-day trips to reefs, seamounts and offshore islands that standard day boats cannot reach. That remoteness is part of the appeal, but it also means a missed connection, medical issue or booking error can leave a traveler far from the nearest port and far from help.

Co-founder and CEO Erol Bucholz said the idea for Blue Rides came from personal experience. He was left stranded on the side of a road with his dive gear and luggage on the opposite side of the world after a trip arranged through a different booking platform fell apart, with no support available to him at the time.

"I've been the diver stuck on the far side of a booking with no one to call. When you've traveled halfway around the world for a liveaboard, help has to come from a real person who understands diving. That's why every Blue Rides booking comes with human support and dive insurance built in, not sold as add-ons."

— Erol Bucholz, Co-Founder and CEO, Blue Rides

Built by Divers, for Divers

Co-founder Kimber Greenwood, who leads branding, marketing and partnerships at Blue Rides, brings a background that spans marine biology, nursing and underwater photography. She holds a bachelor's degree in marine biology, is a registered nurse, and worked on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response. She also spent more than a decade as a lifeguard and swim instructor, has more than 24 years of diving experience, and has owned Water Bear Photography for 10 years.

Greenwood said the platform was designed to answer questions divers routinely struggle to find answered elsewhere, including what a trip actually costs, whether a boat suits underwater photographers, and when to travel to see specific marine species. The site lists transparent pricing ahead of checkout, flags whether a vessel has a dedicated camera room with photos where available, and includes seasonal and animal migration details for each route.

Blue Rides has also set up an affiliate program aimed at dive shops and instructors who organize group trips, giving them a way to book travelers through the platform and earn commission. As a newly formed company, Blue Rides says it is building its reputation in public, directing prospective customers to verified reviews on Trustpilot and to the founders' social media accounts.

A Fragmented Niche Travel Market

Liveaboard diving occupies a narrow corner of adventure travel, one historically served by a patchwork of regional operators, dive shop referrals and booking aggregators with uneven standards for customer protection. Specialized trips to remote locations often carry higher stakes than conventional package tours, since itineraries can involve multiple international flights, small-boat transfers and limited connectivity once a vessel is at sea. Startups positioning insurance and support as default features, rather than optional upsells, reflect a broader pattern across travel booking more generally, where consumers increasingly expect protection to be built into the price rather than pitched separately at checkout.

Blue Rides plans to introduce itself to the trade side of the industry at DEMA Show 2026, the scuba diving and dive travel industry's annual trade-only event. Greenwood is scheduled to present during the Snapshot Sessions on the main floor at 1 p.m. on Friday, November 6, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

Blue Rides enters a specialized travel segment with a pitch built around protection and transparency rather than price alone. Its success will depend on whether divers and the dive shops that refer them adopt a new platform over established booking channels. The company's presentation at DEMA Show 2026 next month will offer an early test of that reception among industry professionals.