About World Travel Awards Nominations and Voting Process
World Travel Awards was expressly launched with the aim of encouraging the international travel and tourism industry to embrace the pursuit of excellence.
There are 3 parts in the nominations process:
Step 1
Candidates for nomination are based upon the previous year's voting. Winner and 4 qualifying runners up of the previous voting will automatically qualify into the following year’s nominations.
Step 2
The nomination is open for the self-nominations for any organisations who wish to enter.
Step 3
The nominations are then vetted and inspected by a group of industry experts. Issues such as customer relations to creativity, quality of service, standards, guest satisfaction, product innovation and business acumen.will be included in this review. The stringent process of vetting and qualifying takes place throughout the course of each year.
The nominations are decided in a timely manner, without bias or prejudice. All the nominations are announced at each year at ITB in Germany in the print and on the web.
The voting process is online and a year-long communications campaign encourages global participation. The votes come from executives working within travel and tourism, but notably the majority are the travel agents. In 2008 the voting has been open to the travelling public. Travel agent voters can upgrade to the "industry" status by providing their travel agent association membership number during registration. Votes cast by travel agent voters count as two votes while the votes cast by non-industry voters count as one vote.
Inevitably, once the nomination process is published - as is normal practice in any competition - nominated companies may and frequently do lobby for votes from their top clients and travel agents. As the World Travel Awards became increasingly known and respected, it was inevitable that some of those nominated would expand their profile among agents in order to help their cause. This process helps the organisations not only to ensure a good result, but also to promote their brand within the industry to increase sales and bottom line.
