There are many Dive Centres, Resorts and shops in Cyprus with varying degrees of experience, size, professionalism, services and safety standards.
A number retain excellent owners and staff with many years of experience and a good solid background of training. Then there are those that have some experience and tend to concentrate on entry level type courses and standard dive trips due to their limited knowledge, while others are to be quite honest inexperienced and unprofessional due to a poor background of training and experience. Dive Centres can also range from a shack on a beach to small one room resorts, and then there are the mid to large Dive Centres offering a full range of services and equipment to a wide range of diver types.
To give an example of differing competencies and standards of Dive Centres you need to look further into the staff, their experience and diving background along with the range of services they provide. There is a big difference between an owner of a Dive Centre who has had years of experience working as a dive professional with an experienced Dive Centre that can pass on all the key attributes of a proper dive pro - before they even become an Instructor ! Then for that individual to then work for years with a number of experienced Instructors learning their trade to a competent level after they have become an Instructor teaching many courses and leading many dives. This individual will have completed hundreds if not thousands of dives and absorbed a lot of information, experience and general knowledge of all aspects of running a Dive Centre.
Compare that to an individual who has done 50 or so dives and then enrols as a Divemaster and completes it in a small amount of time. Then they go on to complete their Instructor course and have done only about 100 dives or so with little or no teaching or guiding experience. Or someone that has done a bit of diving and decides to make a career change and do a zero to hero as quickly as possible. Both of these individuals are then actually allowed to open up a Dive Centre by certain Dive Agencies ! This is common in Cyprus with middle aged ex Military or Civil Servants for example who have a lump sum to retrain with and want something to do with their semi retirement.
You then see these same 'Instructors' who have never had a good experienced Instructor to shadow and learn from, or who have no real professional experience, actually teaching Open Water Diver courses on the Zenobia with a minimum depth of over 18 metres and Divemasters training new students because they don't have enough staff. You also see big classes of students with heavy ratios per Instructor leading to poor standards of training and safety and divers being taken on dives that they are clearly not ready for. All this is a result of a poor professional history of training with little or no experience before opening up a Dive Centre.
They also target beginners as they have no idea of what a good Instructor or Dive Centre is and unfortunately think we are all the same. Good divers with a good diving background and experience know the best Dive Centres when they compare them.
The best Dive Centres are those that offer a range of services, which also shows good experience, with correctly trained and properly experienced Instructors who can actually teach and show divers the best and safest dives possible for their experience and certification levels. Dive Centres that have been established with these competencies and generally the same staff for a number of years are out there but you need to know what you are looking for. Generally by going to visit the Centres is the best way to get a good feel for the operation rather than choosing online or via emails.