Here are the champions!

BA Comair was declared Outbound Industry Champion 2006 at the Now Media travel and tourism industry lunch at the Johannesburg Country Club yesterday. Mantis collection was named the Inbound Industry Champion. David Marsh, Now Media md, praised the winners for their visionary approach and for making a positive difference in their respective industries, saying they had emerged as winners due to their track record of raising the bar. The industry judges for the Outbound Industry Champion Award 2006 – Allan Lunz (Carlson Wagonlit Travel), Lilian Boyle (Rennies Travel), Garth Wolff (eTravel), Will Puk (Sure Travel) and Vanya Lessing (Flight Specials) – chose the BA Comair as the company which had done the most to positively change travel and tourism in South Africa. The group re-engineered itself to take advantage of the deregulation of domestic air travel and more recently gave renewed impetus to growth by starting low-cost carrier kulula.com, which recently announced the expansion of its activities to include cross-border flights. Out of a total of 29 nominees from the industry, BA Comair, Thompsons Tours and Protea Hotels were the three short-listed finalists. Marsh also announced that Now Media would be establishing a broad-based BEE Trust to ensure that a number of young PDI graduates interested in pursuing a career in the Business-to-Business media industry receive exceptional further training and experience in the field of their choice – advertising sales, publishing, journalism, online media and IT. “We want to increase the number of exceptional, driven and innovative people who can really take media forward in South Africa,” he said. Kate Nathan (katen@nowmedia.co.za)