"Over four decades, tourism in New Zealand and Real Journeys in particular have benefited from Tony's no-bull..., honest and incredibly loyal and hard-working approach to business," Horgan said.
"Tony has been constantly innovative over that time, full of ideas to grow and with the drive and energy to make them happen."
McQuilkin is credited with ideas such as RJs' glass-roofed, bullet-design Milford coaches, overnight Fiordland cruises and developing Queenstown's Walter Peak product, but stresses everything is a team effort.
A major contribution was identifying the Chinese tourism market early on.
After his first job, he took on roles such as head of sales and international markets director before more latterly becoming commercial director.
Real Journeys takes tourists through Doubtful Sound in 2013. Photo / Supplied
"We always had an attitude that we'd get out and promote our excursions and our experiences all around the world, and that proved to be really successful.
"Even if you were in the back streets of some godforsaken place in southern China, and there was just a wall of black bicycles, you'd be out there with a Chinese brochure saying, 'This is what you can do'."
He recalled lugging 15kg boxes of brochures around the world in the pre-internet age.
He noted that after the Global Financial Crisis in the late 2000s, numbers from tourism markets such as the UK, Europe and the US almost halved.
The saviour of New Zealand, and indeed Queenstown, was the burgeoning Chinese market, and today it's hugely significant.
