Zoom in to Perfection

This week, we held a Zoom presentation about Raja4Divers, the creation of the resort, as well as the current situation on the island with the borders still closed for international tourism. The presentation was hosted by one of our longest-standing partners, the Swiss travel agency WeDive. As with everything we do here, we wanted this event to be as perfect as possible – at least the parts we could influence ourselves, considering there were still enough insecurities, such as technical aspects like our slow internet connection.

True to Maya’s concept of involving the team in everything we do, the entire staff was to be present, despite the presentation taking place in the wee hours (4 am Pef time, to be precise!) because of the time difference to Switzerland. Our resort’s special atmosphere has always been and continues to be based on the staff’s presence and involvement at all times. They live and work in the resort and are visible to our guests, unlike in other resorts of our area. And our guests seem to enjoy that, as their feedbacks keep confirming. For our guests to be able to witness and get to know the local people and their way of life, at least for the duration of their stay with us, seems to differentiate us from others and a reason for them to keep coming back.

We definitely wanted this presentation to be an event and to be seen by as many people as possible. So we promoted it widely. I wasn’t going to settle for 50 people watching. I have always wanted to get the maximum out of an effort for which I am willing to invest a lot of time and energy. And I sometimes have difficulties understanding why everyone doesn’t think the same way, but I know people have different objectives...

Luckily, Maya is also a perfectionist which is why we set our bar very high. I think you can be remote, informal, close to nature and authentic, as we are on Pulau Pef, and still aim for the best possible version in everything you do. And there is one thing, Maya and I both hate: boring presentations. Which is why ours had to be anything but boring!
I hope we achieved this goal and that if you watched the presentation, you were entertained.

As always with such events, the last few days and evenings were hectic. Since we were using an external camera to get a better video quality than with the built-in laptop camera, there were several rehearsals to get the technical aspects as well as the angle, the sound quality (which ended up being a challenge anyway) and the focus right. We are lucky to have Marcel, our facility manager, who is quite the tech savvy and almost always found a solution to every problem we encountered.

Tough rehearsal!

But in spite of all the rehearsals, there were two factors we couldn’t predict: the weather and the internet connection. Lately, it had been raining hard quite often during the night. Not a problem if you’re in your bed dreaming of beautiful reefs full of fish. But if you’re planning a live presentation at 4am and prefer not to be blown away by the wind or your presentation to be drowned by the sound of heavy rain, you hope for a quiet night. We did, and it worked out!
And to our great relief, our satellite internet was stable too, something you can’t always count on in our part of the world.

Was it a success for us? You bet! Are we happy we did it? Absolutely! Even though at first, we were not sure whether it might be counterproductive, considering we still don’t know when people can travel to Indonesia again. But I think it was the right moment to present ourselves to the world. Our guests, families and friends keep asking how and what we are currently doing on the island. This was the chance to show all of you that we are fine, still busy and keeping the resort in shape for your return. It was also the possibility for people who have never been to Pulau Pef to get a notion of what we mean by «being family», «good vibes on the island» and «informal atmosphere at the resort».

Almost 200 people watching and 90% of them staying for at least one hour is a big success for us. What did you think of the presentation if you watched it?
​Your honest feedback would be greatly appreciated.

And if you missed it – don’t despair! We recorded the whole presentation and will upload it to our YouTube channel as soon as possible. Just bear with us for a few more days!