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MEAs and ITAs 2023 launch

Image: The 2022 BGTW Members’ Excellence Awards and BGTW International Tourism Awards

BGTW Members’ Excellence Awards and BGTW International Tourism Awards Launch – it’s time to get noticed!

Each year the Guild’s two prestigious awards schemes give members a superb opportunity to get themselves noticed by commissioning editors and others across the travel media community.

Entering your best work in the BGTW Members’ Excellence Awards (MEA) and nominating your favourite, new, tourism projects in the BGTW International Tourism Awards (ITA) brings the opportunity to raise your own profile.

So here we are, at the start of May, and I’m delighted to announce that the MEA and ITA 2023 are up and running. Or to put it another way:

“It’s time to enter and nominate.”

Here are the basics for members who have taken part before.

For the MEA, there are 16 categories and the closing date for entering your best work is Friday 4 August.

For the ITA, there are three categories and the closing date for nominating tourism projects from across the world is Friday 28 July.

Now, a bit more detail:

Members’ Excellence Awards:

The MEA recognises the best work of Guild members across travel writing, blogging, broadcasting and photography.

There are 16 categories – 12 of which are for individual pieces of work, and four are for a portfolio of four pieces of work.

This year there’s a NEW category for ‘Sustainability Feature of the Year’, and we’ve split the ‘Travel Feature of the Year – non-UK’ into two: ‘Travel Feature of the Year -Europe (non-UK)’ and ‘Travel Feature of the Year – Wider World’.

Choose your category(ies), enter your best work, and we do all the rest. You can enter all categories, but can only submit an article once.

Entry is online, and it’s FREE!

Entries will be judged by a cohort of some 36 judges carefully picked from our sister organisations in Australia and the US, and from across the travel media community in this country and abroad to reflect the diverse nature of our industry.

Entries are anonymised before they’re sent to be judged, and we have different judges for each category.

The deadline for entries is Friday 4 August.

Finalists will be announced on Sunday 1 October.

The winners will be revealed at the BGTW Annual Awards Gala in central London on Sunday 5 November (the eve of World Travel Market London).

Winners will receive a cash prize.

International Tourism Awards

The ITA recognises excellence in new tourism projects from across the world.

You nominate your favourite project(s).

The projects must have opened or started since 1 August 2020.

There are three categories:

Best UK Tourism Project

Best Europe Tourism Project (non-UK)

Best Wider World Tourism Project

You nominate online, and it’s also FREE! Again, you can nominate for each category, but you need to have visited the project.

The deadline for nominations is Friday 28 July.

Nominations will be verified then put online giving all members the opportunity to vote for their top three in each category.

Those top three in each category will be this year’s finalists and will be announced at the start of September. This gives plenty of time for the members nominating finalists to encourage representatives from their projects to attend the Annual Awards Gala.

The winning projects will be revealed on Sunday 5 November at the Annual Awards Gala.

One final point. There seem to be many awards schemes around at the moment. But the BGTW awards special. They are for you as BGTW members. Winning a BGTW award really is something to write home about!

We’ll be reminding you about the awards in the weeks to come. But for now, to find out more, log on to the Members’ section, and click on either International Awards Nominations 2023 or Members’ Excellence Awards 2023 under Menu on the right hand side of the page.

Stuart Render
By: Stuart Render Travel and Transport Writer and Editor