Pedro Lavia received the prestigious career award from the Publituris Portugal Travel Awards 2019. This recognition is unanimously recognized by the industry as the “Oscars”. Tourism in Portugal, and took place on the 17th of September at the Manuel Possolo Hippodrome in Cascais.
Pedro Roberto Lavia was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941. He began his 17-year-old entrepreneurial career in entertainment when he opened an equipment factory with his brother. In his entrepreneurial mission, he created innovative projects in more than 15 countries in Latin America and later in 4 countries in Southern Europe.
In 1988, he started what would become the most iconic project of his career, an educational entertainment oceanographic park, which has since achieved much success in bringing tourists to the Algarve, and is ranked as one in the top ten theme parks in Europe according to a TripAdvisor ranking.
In 2004, he assumed the presidency of the European Association of Aquatic Mammals (EAAM), being the first "Portuguese representative" to receive such a distinction in the then 33 years of life of this organization. In 2014, in Florida, USA, he received a career award from the International Association of Marine Mammal Trainers (IMATA), which for the first time in the history was awarded to a non-American person.
Coming from an Italian family, but being Argentinian by birth and Brazilian at heart, Pedro Lavia claims to be a citizen of the world who chose Portugal to be “his home”. He has been living in Portugal since 1988, the year he created Zoomarine.
The 2019 Publituris Portugal Travel Awards Career Award, awarded to Pedro Roberto Lavia, Founder and President of Zoomarine Algarve, due to its prestige amongst the other awards, was the last award to be awarded at the 2019 event, which was attended by the likes of Ana Mendes Godinho, Secretary of State for Tourism, and Luis Araújo, President of “Tourism of Portugal”.
