Our story
Built around one problem: getting people ashore.
For the first years, guests struggled to get off the boats and onto the sand. Solving it gave us a marina, and the marina gave us a fleet. Everything else on the island followed from there.
2000–2005
The island opens
Big Giftun is chosen for the site, on engineering and environmental advice, so the work would not damage the marine life around it. The venue opens with one umbrella and a small wooden building, and grows to about thirty umbrellas over the first five years.
2006–2007
The problem with getting ashore
Guests struggle to get off the boats and onto the island. We identify it as the one thing holding the whole operation back.
2007–2010
A marina, and our own boats
The marina is built. With it comes the decision to run our own boats rather than charter them, and to build beach and environmental protection into the site.
2010–2015
Seven thousand square metres
The island is extended to seven thousand square metres. Restaurants and a medical room are added, and Paradise Spectra, a glass-sided boat, enters service.
2015–2022
More on the sand
A shop, a Bedouin tent, a kids area and a spa are added. Paradise Conquest, a semi-submarine, joins the fleet.
2018
A second operating phase
New management and new operating systems, and the start of what we think of as the second phase of the business.
Today
Two venues on one island
Paradise Island and Hula Hula Beach Island both run on Big Giftun, sold as separate days out, from the same marina and on the same timetable.
Big Giftun
White sand, with the reef visible from the shore.
Second generation
Run by the founders’ successors.
The company describes the people running it today as the founders’ successors: the second generation of the same family business, with the founding side of the family still in it.
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