Eagle Beach, Aruba – With great pride the Aruba Bucuti Beach Resort announces their BLUE Award from Island’s Magazine in the December 2007 issue dedicated to Sustainable Tourism and the award winners. Islands Magazine is the global authority on island destinations and has been in existence for 26 years. A partner with MSNBC, millions read ISLANDS articles and reviews in their award winning print magazine, on-line magazine and via MSNBC.
Island’s Magazine Editorial Director, Ty Sawyer explains the meaning of the award in these excerpts from the magazine: “Local advocates and ISLANDS readers have noticed, and they are voicing their opinions in the way they travel and where they travel. It’s no longer a fringe group that wants to save the planet. Its become a worldwide phenomenon borne of the necessity to save and sustain all those cultures and places that make the world and incredible place to experience. So we here at ISLANDS decided to celebrate, support and honor the places and people who are so important to islands travel, those who have 
taken up the challenge to make responsible and sustainable tourism practices a vital part of the way they do business and, more importantly, the way they live. To celebrate these incredible and on-going achievements, we’ve put together our inaugural BLUE LIST and launched our ISLANDS Global Sustainable Tourism Awards, which we’ve dubbed THE BLUE AWARDS. The 100 people, places and things that made our list are the very best of the world of islands responsible tourism. They are models that are working. And, they are role models that should be followed and venerated. Congratulations to all our winners in each and every category. We’ve scoured the globe, and everyone on the pages of this issue is doing remarkable work. Support them. Celebrate them. And we at ISLANDS Safe Travels. TY SAWYER, Editor would like to thank them.
“We are very proud to be included on ISLANDS Blue List with this award. All of us at Bucuti are dedicated to sustainable practices and receive our inspiration daily from Bucuti’s owner, Ewald Biemans who has expressed his lifelong passion for nature and the environment by local activism, which was started by setting an example within our own resort.” states Biemans wife Susan “Sustainability is deeply woven into Bucuti’s company culture where all associates are participants from day one on the job.
We hope that this award will inspire more of our islands businesses and community members to participate in environmentally sustainable practices in order to protect and preserve our treasures for future generations. I believe Aruba is in the midst of a midlife crisis…and we’ve lost sight of what made us a success story to begin with. Our island, once described as friendly and charming has been described as ‘soulless’. We have to make a collective effort to retain what makes Aruba Aruba. What are we doing now to ensure our children and their children will be able to thrive here? These sustainability issues should be what we are reading as our headline news. It is time our community rises to a new level of discussion to take action and make a difference, before it is too late.”
