Having a dive center in your home town provides a lot of benefits.
To start with, the ability to complete a significant portion of your training at home lets you learn at your own pace without the time constraints of a holiday – you can take as long as you want to get comfortable and more importantly, save your precious vacation time for actually diving in the ocean.
In addition, you also have a “home base” – a place to network with other divers and have a group to go diving with, to get unbiased advice on equipment, dive trips and more, and also have a dive center that is there to support your journey as a diver.