The award ceremony is part of the Tourism Industry Conference, held today and tomorrow at the Christchurch Convention Centre.
Shotover Canyon Swing and Hukafalls Jet, of Taupo, are Kiwi Discovery's rivals.
Grand Mercure St Moritz, Nomad Safaris and Real Journeys are other Wakatipu operators nominated for awards.
Kiwi Discovery managing director Vance Boyd said it was the first time his multi-adventure company had entered, although associated company Queenstown Rafting came home triumphant in 1999.
"Kiwi Discovery being a finalist is good recognition for the many hundreds of people who have worked with us over the years," Mr Boyd said.
He and his wife, Carol, have seen the tourism industry undergo big changes since they launched their operation 21 years ago.
Mr Boyd worked for the Railways Corporation and Mrs Boyd for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
When government departments were shaken up, they took the opportunity to set up their own venture.
"We identified tourism as a being in a growth phase and Queenstown was the place to build a business beyond the owner-operator stage," he said.
"We bought an existing business called Value Tours, which was and still is a ski holiday operator, and that became the start of a very long and successful relationship."
Value Tours promoted New Zealand ski holidays to Australians, with Queenstown the key destination.
Kiwi Discovery, deliberately given a generic name with future expansion in mind, catered for clients once they landed at the airport.
The Boyds took care of the Queenstown arrangements for clients on ski holidays and operated with six guides from Camp St premises.
Kiwi Discovery ran ski buses and offered ski rentals and some of the same products as today, although on a much smaller scale, Mr Boyd said.
"Tourism in Queenstown then consisted of a number of smaller operators.
It was intensely competitive and many of them were struggling for survival.
If there's any difference between then and now, operators are more co-operative and less personally competitive today."
Kiwi Discovery rode the wave of rapid growth in the ski industry in the mid-1990s and formed Queenstown Rafting with Real Journeys in 1996.
"The opportunity was first noticed by Brian Hutchins, chief executive of Fiordland Travel, which became Real Journeys.
He and I met and discussed the plight of rafting at the time and determined a way to consolidate it," Mr Boyd said.
The Boyds sold the rafting part of Kiwi Discovery to Queenstown Rafting and bought two existing operations, Kawarau Rafts and Makin' Waves Rafting.
They entered into an agreement with Challenge Rafting to combine clients on the Shotover and Kawarau rivers, and later purchased Extreme Rafting in 2005.
Kiwi Discovery in 2008 encompasses the management of Queenstown Rafting, Milford Sound day trips, track packages, a retail booking office, ski equipment rentals, and transfers between all four skifields, the airport and Queenstown.
Its clients number well into the tens of thousands per year and it employs 60 staff at its peak season.
"Kiwi Discovery will keep on doing what we're doing," Mr Boyd said.
"We're still enjoying good growth out of our existing product range, so that's our current strategy.
But if any overwhelmingly attractive opportunities come along, we'll take a look."
