Honolulu-based Pacific Business News, which has recognized various categories of achievement throughout Hawaii since it was founded in 1963, presented its inaugural Pineapple Award in the visitor attraction leadership category to the Polynesian Cultural Center during a dinner event at the Hawaii Convention Center in Waikiki on September 22, 2016.

PBN, as its also known, announced in May 2016 that it would create the new visitor industry Pineapple Awards program (which had previously been part of it’s popular Business Leadership Hawaii recognition program). The awards are named after the visitor industry’s traditional “symbol of hospitality.”

The Business Journal, which has covered Hawaii for more than 50 years, collected nominations through August 5. Other finalists in the attractions category included the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor, the USS Missouri Memorial Association and Hiipaka LLC, doing business as Waimea Valley.

In recognizing the Polynesian Cultural Center, Pacific Business News noted the PCC has operated for more than 50 years while hosting approximately 800,000 visitors a year while helping to educate almost 30,000 BYU–Hawaii students through its work-study program.

The Business Journal also pointed out that the Center had invested “millions of dollars in buildings and infrastructure including a shopping center” — the Hukilau Marketplace — as “they are preparing for the next 50 years.”

“This is a wonderful validation by the industry,” said Eric Workman, PCC Senior VP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development, who accepted the award on behalf of the Center. “I was also thrilled to tell that audience that we were created to help the students.”

“We have provided opportunities to give nearly 26,000 students a university education, which many would not have been able to receive otherwise. We do this by preserving and perpetuating the best of the Polynesian cultures, wonderful things which are more and more rare. Increasingly, we are finding we are actually teachings students elements of their cultures which had been lost in a generation; and we are igniting within them a desire to preserve their cultures,” Workman continued.

“All of our actions here at the Polynesian Cultural Center, our driving purpose, is to share the spirit of aloha with the visitors to Hawaii. When they come here, they feel our spirit — something they’ve never felt anywhere else in the world. We could not do it without all of us as a team working together. We really are one ohana [family] sharing aloha.

PBN further quoted Workman as saying that the Center works “to be part of the local community. It opens its facilities for events such as the ‘We Are Samoa Festival.’ Windward Oahu schools can use the Center free of charge for one event each year. [And] for decades, fourth-graders from throughout Oahu have come to the Center to learn more about their native cultures.”

In addition to attractions, other Pineapple Award categories included leadership by an individual in hospitality management, the Oahu large hotel of the year, a neighbor island large hotel of the year category, leadership in food and beverage, and a a career achievement award for an individual.

Inaugural winners in the other categories included: André Tatibouet, Career Achievement; Hawaiian Paddle Sports, Activities; Gourmet Events Hawaii, Event Planning Company of the Year; Montage Kapalua Bay, Boutique Hotel of the Year; Sheraton Waikiki, Large Hotel of the Year; the Westin Kaanapali Ocean Resorts Villas, Food and Beverage; and for Leadership, David Carey, President and CEO, Outrigger Enterprises Group.

For more PCC October 2016 news, CLICK HERE

Story and images by Mike Foley