Scenic Group recognised and awarded the most outstanding achievements of its travel partners, advisors and consultants, at its prestigious Night of Stars event, at W Hotel Sydney Saturday night.
The evening also signified the start of the campaign to celebrate Scenic Group, founded in Australia in 1986 and this year celebrating “40 Years of Innovation”.
The black-tie event was attended by more than 250 travel industry leaders and partners to celebrate the outstanding CY2025 luxury sales performance for FIT, groups and charter sales, across the Australian and New Zealand markets.
With entertainment by the energetic Rob Mills and guests including the Getaway crew, including Catriona Rowntree and David Reyne, plus MC David Whitehill, the night was full of surprises, including many of the big award winners.
That included Complex Travel Group, founded by Mark and Amy Trim, which has only been selling cruise for three years. As the name implies, Complex Travel Group focusses on complex travel solutions for Australian-based clients, including round the world airfares, Business Class travel, luxury holidays, tour + cruising packages and rewards point travel.
Among the winners was Adelaide-based online travel consultant Sarah O’Brien who picked up Highest Volume Consultant for both Scenic & Emerald, while Complex Travel Group was awarded Highest Volume Single Location and Highest Volume Agency for SA, plus a trophy for Diamond Sales of $5m-$10m. Both O’Brien and Tour + Cruise general manager Genevieve Thompson, who came second to O’Brien in both Scenic and Emerald Highest Volume Consultant, were in tears as the trophies continued to pile up on their table.
Other big agency winners included Envoyage Miranda and Geelong Travel. For individual awards, BDM of the year, chosen from among the 14 across Australia and New Zealand, went to Jodi Watson for SA/WA.
Coming from across the ditch Scenic’s Highest Volume agency in New Zealand was awarded to House of Travel Hamilton while Highest Volume Consultant went to Tania Wheeler of House of Travel Te Awamutu.
Luxe door prizes
There were also some luxe door prizes including two spots on the inaugural Scenic Ikon famil cruise won by Helloworld Travel Strathpine and 2nd ATP Cruise and Travel – with each agency having to decide who the lucky recipient will be.
Geelong Travel and Helloworld Travel Stanthorpe will have the same difficult decision as to who boards luxury yacht Emerald Kaia.
Scenic Group general manager Sales & Marketing APAC, Anthony Laver, said these winning advisors were the reason for the success of the company that started with just two coaches under founder Glen Moroney.
“They are not going to be replaced by AI,” Laver said.
Laver did make apologies for Moroney, busy supervising the next generation of ships either currently under construction or being completed in shipyards in Croatia and Vietnam. They included the soon to launch Emerald Kaia, Emerald Astra, Emerald Lumi and Scenic Ikon. Laver also hinted that there in fact a further 10 ships currently in the pipeline. He also suggested advisors “keep an eye out for new Emerald tours in Africa and Egypt” which brought gasps of surprise from the crowd.
“As a proudly Australian founded business, we celebrate 40 years of innovation in 2026,” Laver said. “The Scenic Group Night of Stars Awards evening provides the opportunity to thank and recognise the outstanding accomplishments of our esteemed Australian & New Zealand trade partners, for their support and growth that has been integral to our journey.”
