A family-owned Milford Sound cruise company has been named one of Trip Advisor’s 'Top 10 Experiences in New Zealand' for the second year running.

And in an extra surprise, Cruise Milford has learned it has also made the travel review website’s 'Top 10 Tourism operator in the South Pacific' list for 2020. 

Operations manager Hamish Egerton said he and his team loved offering breath-taking tours to Milford Sound and were humbled to rate so highly with their customers.

"We're a small family business from Te Anau and up against some fairly big names.... we always strive to be the absolute best but to be recognised as that is something else," he said. 

The Tripadvisor 'Travellers' Choice' awards come out every year and showcase the 'best of the best' of destinations, experiences, hotels more based upon its traveller reviews and ratings.

There are thousands of tourism operators in the South Pacific so coming in the Top 10 is a huge deal. 

"We're all just a little bit in shock at the moment really, we were hoping that we'd just be able to hold onto our top in NZ award," said Mr Egerton. 

Cruise Milford offers boutique cruising experiences in Piopiotahi/Milford Sound. The boats are smaller and are less crowded, so the local crew can offer an informative and engaging tour of the place that was labelled the 'Eighth Wonder of The World' by Rudyard Kipling.

Mr Egerton said winning such accolades would not have been possible without the other local tourism operators they partnered with every day who helped to make the travellers’ experience so special. 

"Everyone knows that with any part of any experience if any part of it goes wrong then it destroys the whole product," Mr Egerton said.

Cruise Milford run partnerships with Fiordland Tours and Southern Lakes Helicopters, which offer flight and coach tours for its tour groups from Te Anau, as well as Cheeky Kiwi travel company, which transports small group tours from Queenstown. 

"We've got the award for it because our customers voted for us, but there are so many other companies that take care of those people to get them to Milford in the first place, they're doing a phenomenal job."

Mr Egerton said against the challenges posed by a global pandemic, the business had been "okay so far". He said July had been a good month, thanks to Kiwis travelling during the school holidays, and he said he now hoped business would pick up again coming into summer.

The summer months are when Fiordland tourism operators rely heavily on high numbers of travellers passing through to bring most of the annual income in. And, with the last of the wage subsidy coming to an end in September, Mr Egerton said he hoped Kiwis took this time of not being able to travel overseas as an opportunity to explore their own back yard. 

"I know it sounds so cliché… but the statement that now is the best time to go see your own country, couldn't be more true," he said. 

Today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was quoted as saying an Australian/New Zealand 'travel-bubble' would be a "long way off".