Press Release: Hall of Fame

For immediate release:

Black Orchid Resort

 AWARDED TRIPADVISOR CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE FOR FIVE CONSECUTIVE YEARS

Inducted into ‘Hall of Fame’ of Five-time Certificate of Excellence Winners on the World’s Largest Travel Site

CITY, STATE/COUNTRY – May 22^nd  2015 – Black Orchid Resort, Burrell Boom Village, Belize District today announced that it has been recognized as a TripAdvisor® Certificate of Excellence Hall of Fame winner.  The Certificate of Excellence award celebrates excellence in hospitality and is given only to establishments that consistently achieve great traveler reviews on TripAdvisor. The ‘Hall of Fame’ was created to honour those businesses that have earned a Certificate of Excellence for five consecutive years.  Winners include accommodations, eateries and attractions located all over the world that have continually delivered a superior customer experience. 

EXAMPLE QUOT “Being awarded the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence five years in a row and inducted into the ‘Hall of Fame’ is a true source of pride for the entire team at Black Orchid Resort and we’d like to thank all of our past guests who took the time to complete a review on TripAdvisor,” said Beverly Dawson, Operations Manager at Black Orchid Resort. “There is no greater seal of approval than being recognized by one’s customers. With the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence based on customer reviews, the accolade is a remarkable vote of confidence to our business and our continued commitment to excellence.  Black Orchid Resort has been ranked #1 on the TripAdvisor Customer Satisfaction Index in the Belize District for over 9 years”.

"Winning the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence for five consecutive years is a remarkable feat. TripAdvisor is pleased to induct five-time award winners into the ‘Hall of Fame’,” said Marc Charron President, TripAdvisor for Business. “By putting a spotlight on businesses that are focused on consistently delivering great service to customers, TripAdvisor not only helps drive an improvement to hospitality standards around the world, it also gives businesses both large and small the ability to shine and stand out from the competition.”

When selecting Certificate of Excellence winners, TripAdvisor uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the honorees that take into account the quality, quantity and recency of reviews and opinions submitted by travelers on TripAdvisor over a 12-month period as well as business’s tenure and ranking on the Popularity Index on the site.  To qualify, a business must maintain an overall TripAdvisor bubble rating of at least four out of five, have a minimum number of reviews and must have been listed on TripAdvisor for at least 12 months.

-ENDS-

Black Orchid Resort

About TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor^® is the world's largest travel site*, enabling travelers to plan and book the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools that check hundreds of websites to find the best hotel prices. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching 340 million unique monthly visitors**, and more than 225 million reviews and opinions covering more than 4.9 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. The sites operate in 45 countries worldwide. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business, a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to millions of monthly TripAdvisor visitors.

TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) manages and operates websites under 24 other travel media brands: www.airfarewatchdog.com, www.bookingbuddy.com, www.cruisecritic.com, www.everytrail.com, www.familyvacationcritic.com, www.flipkey.com, www.thefork.com (including www.lafourchette.com, www.eltenedor.com, www.iens.nl and www.besttables.com), www.gateguru.com, www.holidaylettings.co.uk, www.holidaywatchdog.com, www.independenttraveler.com, www.jetsetter.com, www.niumba.com, www.onetime.com, www.oyster.com, www.seatguru.com, www.smartertravel.com, www.tingo.com, www.travelpod.com, www.tripbod.com, www.vacationhomerentals.com, www.viator.com, www.virtualtourist.com, and www.kuxun.cn. 

*Source: comScore Media Metrix for TripAdvisor Sites, worldwide, December 2014

**Source: Google Analytics, average monthly unique users, Q1 2015

Contact:

Douglas Thompson

Owner

Black Orchid Resort

douglas@blackorchidresort.com

www.blackorchidresort.com

cell: 633-8288

Zip lining in Belize: a Bird’s Eye View of the Rainforest Canopy

Belize City - A snap shot

Belize City, located on a peninsula that is the furthest Eastern point in the country, is said to have been built on a foundation of “rum bottles, logwood chips and loose coral.”  Founded in the early 1700s by the pirate Baymen of St. George’s Caye, Belize City now has a population of over 70,000 people. 

Although Belize City gives up ground to the Caribbean each year, and the government moved inland to avoid the pattern of natural disasters that strike there, it is still a bustling city filled to the brim with both residents and tourists. While one can get there by flying into the airport ten miles outside the city of Ladyville not far from downtown Belize, many tourists find their way to Belize through transatlantic cruises, as Belize City is an important port and stopping place for cruise ships. Perhaps the biggest draw to Belize is that at least fifty percent of the country is covered by dense jungle. Largely rainforest under the protection of the government, these forests remain mostly unexplored and filled with tropical foliage and animals ranging from crocodiles to jaguars and armadillos. Hosting over four thousand species of flowers and five hundred species of birds, Belize is a wildlife wonderland. With unprecedented beauty and thousands of different species of flora and fauna, visitors might have trouble planning just how to go about seeing it all. Luckily, companies like the Black Orchid Resort have already thought of this and offer guests the chance to take their cues from the winged residents of the rainforest and fly through the canopy.

Pulleys and Zip lines and Helmets - Oh My

Zip lining, also called a canopy adventure, is a tree-based aerial trekking course. While wearing helmets as well as harnesses that safely attach them to a cable, participants use natural gravity to propel themselves from platform to platform through the rainforest canopy high above the ground. Zip lining, while perhaps more of a thrill ride than what it was intended to be when first invented, started as a form of conveyance that began out of necessity. Residents and workers in areas like remote regions of China, the Costa Rican rainforest and the Australian Outback often needed to quickly transport people and supplies across impassable areas like canyons or rivers. To do this, they would create a form of gravity-fueled transport using pulleys that would thread cables between two points.

Popular especially in countries with large rain forests or canyons, zip lining can now be found all over the world in correlation with busy tourist-filled cities. Part of the reason for its popularity is the way participants get around within the Zip line course. By setting the pulleys at different levels throughout the canopy, participants do not need a lot of upper body strength or to be especially fit. This is advantageous not only for participants who might not have ever had a chance to see the rainforest from a bird’s eye view, but it also allows companies to make a profit from an activity that is neither expensive to produce nor intrusive to the environment through which participants zip line.

In Belize we have the Longest Zip Line course in Central America. We have 12 platforms through the pristine jungle in the Mayflower Bocawina National Forest. The longest zip line run is 2,300 feet long and is considered the longest in Belize. We also offer night zip lining. Hear the noises of the night as you zip through the jungle with our experienced guides. And it’s even more spectacular during a full moon! 

World’s Biggest Zip lines

Now that zip lining has taken off as both a sport and a tourist attraction throughout the world, there have of course been some extreme examples built in order to achieve certain world records. The Eye of the Jaguar is the longest zip line in the world. Constructed from a single cable, participants reach an astounding speed of 110 kilometers per hour. This zip line is located 45 minutes north of Cusco, in Peru, and is 2, 130 meters or 1.3 miles long. On the other side of the Atlantic in Snowdonia, Wales, there is a zip line that reaches speeds of over 100 miles per hour, and travels 500 feet above the mountain lake at Penrhyn Quarry for almost a mile. It is exactly 1,600 meters or just under a mile long.

Fly Through Belize

If you’ve never zip lined before, but have a desire to experience the rainforest and aren’t quite sure what that might mean — consider flying through the canopy absorbing all that nature has to offer. You won’t be disappointed, and odds are you’ll remember your adventure for the rest of your life.

contributor, Susan Gibbons

The Chiquibul Forest Reserve

The Chiquibul National Park is the largest protected area in Belize and encompasses 16% of all protected areas in our country. It is home to Belize’s highest biodiversity and a natural habitat to many of Belize’s exotic plants and animals like Jaguars, Pumas, kinkajous, ocelots, margays, tapirs, monkeys and a wide array of tropical birds including the magnificent ScarletMacaws.

In this forest lies some of Belize’s dynamic natural & cultural resources including massive underground caves, rivers, limestone reserves, ridges and not to mention The Ancient Maya City of Caracol, the largest man made structure in Belize to date. Caracol has been designated as an archaeological reserve and is frequently visited by tourist to Belize.

Main attractions to the unique reserve includes the Chiquibul Cave System which is one of the largest caves sytems in Central America and stretches all the way into Guatemala, Overnight camping and jungle treks, and Scarlet Macaw Monitoring Tour on the Challilo Lake to name a few.

THE BLACK HOWLER MONKEY

The Black Howler Monkey, (Alouatta pigra) known as the ‘baboon’ in Belize has very limited range including Belize, Southern Mexico and Northern Guatemala. It is one of the six howler monkey species found in Central and South America. One of the most remarkable traits of the howler monkey is its loud, rasping howl, which can be heard roaring across the forest for well over a mile. Throughout most of its range, the Howler Monkey is endangered from hunting and habitat destruction. Fortunately, Belize has a healthy population of these loudest of primates. Visitors to Black Orchid Resort are most likely to come to a very close encounter with this specie especially if they opt for a river cruise down the Belize Old River!

The black howler monkey typically lives in troops of 4-12 individuals, with one to three adult males and multiple females and a dominant male heading the troop. The monkeys are strictly vegetarian eating a wide variety of leaves, flowers and fruit.

Howler monkeys have short snouts and wide-set, round nostrils. Their noses are very keen, and the Howler monkey can smell out its food up to 2 miles away. Their noses are usually roundish snout-type, and the nostrils have many sensory hairs growing from the interior. They range in size from 2 to 3 ft. excluding their tails, which can be equally as long, in fact in some cases the tail has been found to be almost 5 times the body length. This is a prime characteristic. Like many New World monkeys, they have prehensile tails. They can grasp items with it, hence why they are often found using their prehensile tails for picking fruit and nuts from trees.

They have lifespans of 15 to 20 years. Males are, on average, 1.5 to 2.0 kg heavier than females.

Howler monkeys generally move quadrupedally on the tops of branches of trees along the Belize River, usually grasping a branch with at least two hands or one hand and the tail at all times. Their strong prehensile tails are able to support their entire body weight. Fully grown adult howler monkeys do not often rely on their tails for full body support, whereas juveniles do so more frequently.

Belize Mayan Tour: Lamanai River Tour and Maya Site

Our Belize Mayan Civilization Tour to Lamanai is a great way to see Belize birds and wildlife along the river, then embark at the Lamanai Maya Site cradled on the shores of the New River Lagoon. On the way, you will get to enjoy a scenic boat ride up the New River, providing a great opportunity for wildlife spotting. At the site you will get to marvel at panoramic views of the rainforest and lagoon from atop the High Temple.

This amazing tour is offered for $110 USD per person and can be scheduled with 24 hours advance notice to Black Orchid Resort front desk tour office. Email them to make arrangements.

 You can also learn about other Belize Tours and Adventures from Black Orchid Resort.

Lamanai is the largest Mayan ceremonial site in Northern Belize, one of the largest in Belize; it has more than 719 mapped structures, including two 16th century Christian churches as well as an intact 19th century sugar mill. The most impressive of these is the High Temple – a massive stepped structure built into the hillside overlooking the New River Lagoon – one of the largest Pre-Classic structure in Belize (108 ft / 33 m high). 

Lamanai features many large temples fully exposed to visitors.

Ruins of numerous dwellings, a ball court, and several other temples also remain. Earliest evidence dates to 1500 BC and as the populations grew, so did the center, becoming one of the largest in the region. Situated on a major trade route, Lamanai is one of the longest occupied Mayan cities and was inhabited for over 2000 years. People were living in the area in the 16th century, when the Spanish arrived and built a series of churches (right on top of Mayan temples). 

Archaeological museum has precious findings from the site on display portraying well over 2000 years of Mayan history. One of Belize's finest stelea is found here, which depicts an elaborate carving of the ruler Smoking Shell.

Some of the birds we may encounter on this trip include Black-Collared Hawk, Northern Jacana, Mangrove Swallow, Olive-Throated Parakeet, American Pygmy Kingfisher, and occasionally a Purple Gallinule. Other types of wildlife such as the endangered Morelete's Crocodile and Green Iguana are also a common sighting on the way to Lamanai. After arriving, we will have the chance to explore the ruins and have the opportunity to view birds such as Red-Lored Parrot, Blue-Crowned Mot-mot, Collared Aracari Toucan, Lineated and Pale-Billed Woodpeckers, and Black-Headed and Violaceous Togons. In addition, Yucatan Black Howler Monkeys are usually seen or heard here.  

The name Lamanai means “Submerged Crocodile” in Mayan. The name helps to explain the numerous crocodile motifs at the site. Crocodile effigies appear on figurines, vessel decorations, and on the large headdress on a limestone mask at one of the principal structures at the site.

To reserve your spots on this Belize Mayan Tour with Black Orchid Resort, please email us at info@blackorchidresort.com or call our front desk at +501 - 225 9158.

Reasons to visit Belize

* This paradise of unspoiled nature is not yet discovered by mass tourism, not overcrowded by visitors. It’s authentic and unapologetically real. About 2/3 of Belize’s forests are still intact! Significant part of the country is protected by law –s included in national parks, nature reserves and conservation trust.

* Belize is the heartland of the ancient Mayan civilization. Here are more than 900 Mayan sites, but the biggest and most important are available for public. That's where you can encounter Mystery! You surely have to visit at least 1 or 2 of the great ruin complexes in Belize – Caracol, Xunantunich, Lamanai or Altun Ha. Come and feel live history!

* Belize is one of the best places for scuba diving and snorkeling! The biggest Barrier Reef in Western Hemisphere, which is 185 mi (300 km) long, lies just along Belizean coast. More than 400 species of fish live here. Belize has more than 200 cayes (islands), most of them located inside the Reef, many have great beaches.

* Here are many opportunities for other adventures and active tourism – Cave Tubing, Zip-Lining, Horseback riding, ATV, Bicycle rides and exploring of magnificent cave systems.


* Belize is honored to be called “Mother Nature’s Best Kept Secret”; it is heaven for nature lovers! Belize is an ideal setting for bird watching: over 580 species of birds have been spotted here. The tropical rain forests, savannahs, cayes (islands), wetlands, and coastal plains – that’s where they live. You can encounter wild animals in the forests. Belize houses the only Jaguar preserve in the world (commonly known as the Jaguar Reserve or Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary).

* Belize is English-speaking country (the only one to the south of USA), that makes easier to access all information about ‘the Jewel’ and find your way to what you want to experience here.

* Here are only 330,000 inhabitants – and that’s it. This tiny population is a part of what makes the country so easy to travel and come to know and love; there is plenty of room, and nothing is changing too terribly fast. The people are as diverse as the eco-systems with a mix of Creole, Garifuna, Mestisos and Mayans.

* You can find here exclusive accommodation; you can feel the one with nature staying in a luxurious jungle resort, the one like Black Orchid Resort in Burrell Boom.