This is exactly what the resorts I've been to do. Dives are free (All inclusive, Couples Jamaica) but if don't have a dive book with a signed off dive in the last year it is 50$ for a refresher/skills test.

I've normally felt really safe on these but once there was way to many people for them all to be babysat and the group actually got split up due to 'issues' that the following guide had to help with.

Resort Diving is mostly safe, the dive profile helps keep you safe. At 30ft, a lot less can go wrong. You can easily survive a rapid ascent from 30ft, heck you likely don't need to actively blow bubbles unless you took a huge breath or are ascending super fast. OP who hasn't dove in a while shouldn't make their first dive on vacation a 120ft bottom. They will likely not remember how to breath, how to swim and will consume too much air and blow the dive for everyone. I refuse to dive with strangers on dive boats, I have never once had a dive buddy physically verify my secondary and some of them get weird when I ask them to verify their primary and secondary with me. The 'I know' eye rolls when i show them where my weight release is, where things are on my BC. Honestly thats what pushed me in to technical diving, everyone takes it serious. If we do our math wrong and the drop tanks aren't sufficient or if the trimix was off we were all dead. When we did cave dives, knowing each exit, knowing the routes we were going to navigate. Rehearsing the transitions between lines. Even with the best planning, things go wrong. Read up on the Diepolder II and III caves - scary stuff

What instructors and dive-masters actually do (or should / are trained to do) for those dives is hold onto the first stage regulator at the top of the tank for the entire duration of the dive and never pass 12 meters. The diver never even needs to worry about buoyancy. We use to call them Lipton (tea) dives, because it was just dipping tourists into the water ;) They are absolutely 100% safe when done according to the requirements.

"Unless you are a diver please don't comment with this type of snark - seriously."

PADI Advanced, deep, nitrox, 100+ dives mostly in the cold waters of the North Sea.

Edited: added context

> it's all too easy to forget things even if you have more than a vague recollection. Whenever I haven't dived for a couple years, I always ask an instructor to check on me while I prepare for the first dive, because I just don't trust myself.

Do you have a checklist?

This should be mandatory for a lot of sports, honestly. Assisted climbing (lead, top-roping) comes to mind. Kinda crazy that in many gyms you can get on a wall with no verification that your belay knows what they're doing.

As far as I know they're mandatory everywhere, but pretty much noone checks this. If you don't sign up yourself, it's not happening.

What evidence? Evidence that lots of diving places take safety shortcuts?

I myself got my first certifications with two amazing divers, they taught me very well and I had a lot of fun. However they also allowed people to take dives that they weren't certified for, because it was a small diving center they could only do two dives a day and they had to satisfy a wide range of divers.

They did that with people that they had taught and knew well, and never had issues (certainly not a 60m compressed air dive as in the article!) but it did indeed make diving somewhat less safe.