While as the guest of honour Patel gave away the trophies to winners who have consistently taken aviation and the hospitality industry across all frontiers, he also stressed the need for development of infrastructure in the Indian airways.

“Indian airways is still at a nascent stage when it comes to infrastructure, we need to develop that,” he said and added at the same time that “there has been an increase in the number of flights operating between India and UK. Earlier, in 2004, in a week only 19 flights were operational between India and UK and now that number has increased to 200.”

It was not just the airways, the minister stressed on Indian tourism as well. Referring to the Elephanta caves, Patel said that the problem is that of lack of connectivity.

“We should upgrade the boats that go to the Elephanta caves. Improve the connectivity without snatching the bread and butter of the boatmen. And at the same time, make the environment around the place more conducive for tourism,” he said.

The ceremony, conducted at the Hotel Hilton Towers at Nariman Point on Friday, was attended by eminent hoteliers and entrepreneurs in the aviation industry.

The projectors displayed different award winning advertisements of the hospitality industry. An award winning advertisement from Yatra.com cheered the audience. And the anchor for the evening and Video Jockey (VJ) Cyrus constantly interacted with the audience to keep the ambience lively.

As the winners came, with pride they made the audience aware of their product or respective company and spent a minute each elaborating on the mantra of their success.