AITO Awards

ENTRY IS NOW OPEN FOR THE PRESTIGIOUS ANNUAL AITO TRAVEL WRITER AWARDS 2017

The five categories include:

• Young Travel Writer of the Year (aged 30 and under): Prize - £350 in cash
• Travel Writer of the Year – short (under 1,500 words): Prize - £350 in cash
• Travel Writer of the Year – long (over 1,500 words): Prize - £350 in cash
• Blogger of the Year: Prize - £250 in cash
• Trade Writer of the Year: Prize - £250 in cash

AITO Travel Writer of the Year

• ‘Under 1,500 words’

• ‘Over 1,500 words’

The AITO Travel Writer of the Year award is the ultimate accolade for travel writers. Recognising excellence in the field of travel writing, this prestigious award is always an impressive entry on any writer’s CV. Past winners include some of the most-respected travel journalists in the industry and it’s always a hotly-contested category. Entrants must be bona fide published journalists.

Only one print - or online - article per writer. The article must have been published between 18 August 2016 and 1 August 2017.

AITO Young Travel Writer of the Year (30 and under)

This award is designed to celebrate the achievements of younger travel journalists. It is open to bona fide published journalists who are aged 30 and under on 1 August 2017.

Only one print - or online - article per writer. The article must have been published between 18 August 2016 and 1 August 2017.

AITO Travel Blogger of the Year

This award recognises the increasing influence of travel bloggers and their creativity, many of which write eloquently and illustrate their posts beautifully.

Only one blog per writer, which must have been published between 18 August 2016 and 1 August 2017.

AITO Travel Trade Writer of the Year

This award recognises the technical writing abilities of travel trade writers – and sometimes that understanding of complex travel industry issues. Trade articles tend to be less descriptive/colourful pieces and more informative, such as trade-specific pieces on companies which sell via the travel trade and travel agencies/industry suppliers.

Only one article per writer and it must have been published between 18 August 2016 and 1 August 2017.

What the judges are looking for?

For AITO Young Travel Writer of the Year, Travel Writer of the Year and AITO Travel Blogger of the Year, AITO judges will be looking for articles that fit the winning formula of being well-written, interesting, informative and inspirational.

For AITO Travel Trade Writer of the Year, AITO judges will be looking for articles that are well-written, informative, clear and concise.

Writers can enter more than one category but only one submission per individual category will be accepted. Submissions do not have to mention AITO or AITO members.

Entries should be submitted by 6pm on Tuesday 1 August. The shortlisted entrants will be announced on aito.com on Tuesday 5 September and the awards will be presented at this year’s AITO Meets the Media event, to be held between 3pm and 6.30pm on Tuesday 17 October, 2017, at Central Hall, Westminster.

We’re requesting all articles to be sent as good quality PDFs or email links to the article, to save a huge amount of printing!

Please email your article to events@travelpr.co.uk. It would help enormously if you could put the following information in the title of the PDF or in your email above/below the link; it’ll save a lot of time…

• Name, publication, category (e.g. save the PDF as Doug Smith, Wanderlust, Young Travel Writer Short.PDF)

We look forward to receiving either personal entries written by you or, if you are an editor, copies of articles that you have commissioned/published and feel are worthy of recognition.

Good luck; the judges look forward to reading your entries!

If you use Twitter, please use the following hashtags:

Meet the Media hashtag #AITOMTM17

Travel Writer of the Year hashtag #AITOTWOTY17

Best wishes,

The AITO team

Many Thanks to our Judges

Many thanks to our judges for their time and dedication to finding articles with that winning-formula: well-known, interesting, informative and inspirational. This year we have 16 AITO members participating in judging, of whom we offer our sincerest thanks and appreciation.

• Alison Garcia Hall - InnTravell
• David Owen - Kudu Travell
• Aled Evans - Undiscovered Destinationsl
• Melissa Hirst - Pettittsl
• Ted Wake - Kirker Holidaysl
• John Thirtle - Geodysseyl
• Jess Millett - Tucan Travell
• John Telfer - Explorel
• James Mundy - InsideAsia Toursl
• Rachel Healey - Abercrombie & Kentl
• Simon Scutt - On Foot Holidaysl
• Katie Cosstick - Cox and Kingl
• Jackie Woon - Oasis Overlandl
• Hollie Youlden - On the Go Toursl
• Gerry Copsey - Just Grenada Groupl
• Mandy Davies - Azure Collectionl
• Heather McKinlay - McKinlay Kiddl
• Tom Duncan - Ciceroni

Winners of the prestigious 2016 AITO Travel Writer of the Year Awards

19 October 2016

The Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) has announced the results of its 20th Travel Writer of the Year awards. This year saw the highest number of entries since the awards began in 1997, with 240 articles submitted, all of an exceptionally high standard.

For the first time, AITO introduced a brand new category – Travel Trade Writer of the Year.

Additionally, after much deliberation, and following a suggestion from a high-profile writer, there were two separate categories for the Travel Writer of the Year Award: Under 1,500 words (for articles commissioned to be short and punchy) and Over 1,500 words (for those that can be as long and descriptive as the writer wishes).

Shortlisted from a total of 240 entries, the names of those who scored highest are as follows:

The top 10 places for the AITO Travel Writer of the Year award 2016 (Over 1,500 words) were as follows:

1. Liz Edwards, The Sunday Times Travel magazine

2. Hannah McKeand, SUITCASE magazine

3. Chris Haslam, The Sunday Times

4. Sarah Barrell, National Geographic Traveller

5. Alicia Miller, The Sunday Times Travel magazine

6. Nick Boulos, Wanderlust

7. Paul Bloomfield, The Sunday Telegraph

8. Nicky Holford, The Guardian

9. Sue Watt, The Daily Telegraph

10. Martin Hemming, The Sunday Times

11. Kerry Christiani, Lonely Planet Traveller

12. Annie Bennett, The Financial Times

The top 10 places for the AITO Travel Writer of the Year award 2016 (Under 1,500 words) were as follows:

1. Michelle Jana Chan, The Daily Telegraph

2. Aaron Miller, The Times

3. Rachel Johnson, Town & Country magazine

4. Matthew Teller, BBC News magazine

5. Ben Lerwill, Rough Guides

6. Nigel Tisdall, Marie Claire magazine

7. Jeremy Head, The Guardian

8. Simon Heptinstall, The Mail on Sunday

9. Richard Mellor, The Explorer

10. Jamie Lafferty, The Guardian

11. Sarah Bailey, Red magazine

12. Janine Di Giovanni, Harper’s Bazaar

The top eight places for the AITO Young Travel Writer of the Year award 2016 were as follows:

1. Francesca Angelini, The Sunday Times

2. Simon Parker, The Daily Telegraph

3. Emily Ames, SUITCASE magazine

4. Alex Allen, The Sunday Times

5. Cathy Adams, Escapism

6. Sophie McGrath, The Lonely Planet Traveller

7. Hazel Plush, The Daily Telegraph

8. Nicola Trup, The Independent

The top five places for the Travel Trade Writer of the Year 2016 were as follows:

1. Joanna Booth, Aspire

2. Josephine Price, ABTA magazine

3. Meera Dattani, Travel Weekly

4. Tamara Hinson, Travel Weekly

5. Sophie Griffiths, TTG

6. Lauren Jarvis, Selling Travel

The top five places for the AITO Travel Blogger of the Year award 2016 are as follows:

1. James Draven, Dearlydepartures.com

2. Emma Gregg, AllAboutEverywhere.com

3. Mike Gerrard, TravelDistilled.com

4. Hannah Summers, Burgersandbruce.com

5. David Whitley, Countrybycountry.com

6. Phoebe Smith, Wanderlust.com

2015 AITO Awards

Best AITO Operator, Agent and Affiliate

The Association of Independent Tour Operators (www.aito.com) celebrated its 40th anniversary at a special dinner and awards ceremony last night (Tuesday 23 February) in the dazzling Gladstone Library and Reading & Writing Room of the Royal Horseguards Hotel, London.

Over 150 AITO Tour Operators, AITO Agents, Affiliated Business Partners and Tourist Offices, Social and Honorary members and special guests attended. Simon Reeve – the British author, television presenter and explorer – was the special guest for the evening and delivered an inspirational speech. AITO was also delighted that Colin Murison Small, its founder and very first chairman, was able to attend the event.

AITO’s members’ awards, which have been reintroduced after a gap of a few years and are now based around client reviews on AITO.com. The categories were AITO Tour Operator of the Year, AITO Agent of the Year and AITO Affiliate of the Year.

This award goes to the member which has had exceptional customer reviews on AITO.com during 2015. The number of reviews had to be 10% or more of the total annual passengers carried to ensure a true reflection of that company's performance.

Gold: Peter Sommer Travels

Silver: CICERONI Travel

Bronze: The Mountain Company

2015 AITO Agent of the Year

This award goes to the AITO Agent which has made bookings with the largest number of AITO tour operators during 2015 as voted by AITO’s tour operators.

Gold: Traveller’s World Salisbury

Silver: Journeys à la Carte

Bronze: Deva Travel

2015 AITO Affiliate of the Year

This award goes to the AITO Business Partner which provided the best service and product in 2015 as voted by AITO tour operators and agents.

Joint Gold winners: 3For and Holiday Extras

Bronze: Faremine