A long timber jetty running out from the treeline over clear shallow water

Silo 5 · About us

How We Choose Who to Work With

Five pillars with published weightings. Safety carries more than a third of the score, and no amount of luxury compensates for failing it.

Ask About a Partner The five pillars

safety and compliance: 35% safety and compliance
sustainability and conservation: 30% sustainability and conservation
service and standard: 20% service and standard
community and authenticity: 15% community and authenticity

Why publish it

A Weighting You Can Argue With

Every travel company says its partners are carefully selected. Almost none says what "carefully" means, which makes the claim unfalsifiable and therefore worthless. So the weightings are published. If you think conservation should outrank safety, or that authenticity deserves more than five per cent, you now have something concrete to disagree with — and that is the point.

A masted phinisi lying at anchor in still water below the forested cliffs of Raja Ampat

Safety & compliance: 35% — certification, protocols, equipment, insurance
Sustainability: 30% — conservation ethos and measurable practice
Service quality: 20% — the standard actually delivered, not advertised
Community engagement: 10% — local employment and local benefit
Authenticity: 5% — whether the experience is what it says it is
Pass mark: A safety failure is disqualifying regardless of total score

The five pillars

What Each Weighting Actually Checks

The score is only meaningful if you know what goes into each part of it.

Safety and standards

Two guests walking a quiet white-sand beach, karst headlands and moored boats behind them

Safety and compliance

35% — the largest single weight

Certification currency, emergency protocols, oxygen and first-aid provision, equipment maintenance records, and insurance in force. A failure here disqualifies an operator regardless of how well it scores elsewhere.

Sustainability and conservation

30%

Not a statement of intent — measurable practice. Waste handling, single-use plastic policy, anchoring behaviour, and whether any money actually reaches the reserve that makes the diving possible.

Service quality

20%

The standard delivered rather than advertised. Guest-to-guide ratio, briefing quality, room and catering standard, and what happens when something goes wrong mid-trip.

Community engagement

10%

Local employment, career progression for Papuan crew, and whether the money spent in the region stays in it. Low weight, non-zero on purpose.

Authenticity

Whether the experience is the one described. The smallest weight because it is the most subjective — and because the other four largely determine it anyway.

What happens after

re-evaluation

A pass is not permanent. Certifications lapse, crews change and standards drift, so the evaluation is repeated rather than filed.