SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Don Morin, owner of Aurora Village, was surprised to receive the NWT Tourism Operator of the Year award at the annual awards gala dinner last Saturday evening.

Aurora Village owner Don Morin gives a speech to about 100 tourism industry representatives Saturday evening after being awarded the NWT Tourism Association's Operator of the Year award. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

Operating in its tenth year, Aurora Village has been highly acclaimed for it's unique facility and unparalleled level of customer service.

"With their unique blend of aboriginal culture with the spectacular, supernatural phenomenon of Aurora, (it) has captured the fascination of worldwide markets," said presenter Robin Wotherspoon, past chair of the NWT Tourism board of directors. "They continue to put Yellowknife and the NWT on the map of aurora tourism."

"This is a great honour," Morin said. "To achieve something like this you have to have an excellent staff who are willing to work 22 hours a day and put up with a lot of crap from me.

"We're looking forward to a long and successful winter."

Morin said dealing with so many clients every year, it's important to him to get to know each and every one of them.

"We try to meet them and make them feel they are very important to us, cause they are," he said after accepting the award. "They enable for us to achieve what we have achieved today."

Other winners at the gala included Linda Croft of the Snowshoe Inn in Fort Providence, who took home the Service Excellence Award, and Chummy Plummer of Plummer's Arctic Lodges, who received the Mike Stilwell Lifetime Achievement Award.