AON Award - Awesome!

Coy? Nani in close proximity to the PM!

Did I say that we are proud?

The AON Fiji Excellence in Tourism Awards are Fiji's tourism Oscars.
In 1991 with the introduction of the first Tourism Week, the Fiji Visitors Bureau and the Ministry of Tourism introduced the first Excellence in Tourism Awards sponsored by the Fiji Times. Many years passed until 1997 when the Fiji Visitors Bureau under the directorship of Sitiveni Yaqona and Bill Whiting decided the Awards should be re introduced. Since then, the Fiji Excellence in Tourism Awards competition is run annually by a voluntary committee of industry members, overseen by the board of trustees to invite nominations, organize judging and hold a gala event for the prize-giving to honor those outstanding members in our industry.
The Mission is to recognize individuals and organization who have gone that extra mile to develop National Tourism and in so doing, have inspired others to share their vision of a buoyant and enduring service industry of supreme national importance.
The process is based on genuine peer review and the awarding ceremony regularly features the crème de la crème of local tourism along with high ranking Government representatives who congregate to celebrate the industry and honor the awardees.

This year was no different.
Having rather surprisingly scooped one of the last Diving awards in 2007 before the category was dumped, we were honored to find our name among the list of finalists but were not really hopeful to win as we were pitched against some rather formidable and highly deserving colleagues.

What can I say, we have won!
This time, the category is Tourism Sustainability and here is our official document!

Click for detail!

To be perfectly frank, we here are all rather overwhelmed.
It is really a great honor, and it is also deeply gratifying to see that all the hard work of the last years has not gone unnoticed - and on a personal note, it has been particularly satisfying to have the Prime Minister witness the honoring of the very same company he pretty much single-handedly saved two years ago.

Thank you thank you thank you!
This is really an awesome day! :)

H/T: our good friends from the Uprising for bringing back a second award to Pacific Harbour!

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