The World Travel Awards, to be announced in Dubai this evening, have come a long way since it began thirty years ago. A small project with an ambitious name, the brainchild of London based Graham Cooke, 13 awards were dispensed at a gala in Hollywood in 1994 on front of 1,400 guests with hairstyles and menus to suit the times, and 11 of the 13 awards stayed in the United States of America.
Changi won the leading airport (then as now, they are the world’s favourite), and British Airways, in their Flower Duet hey-day, won the world’s leading airline, something they had long plastered on the billboards of London’s underground by virtue of a dodgy manipulation of passenger statistics. Beyond the trade magazines (Sabre won best GDS) the awards were scarcely noticed.
Fast forward to 2023, and tonight’s gala in Dubai. It follows regional events in Saint Lucia in August, Ho Chi Minh City in September, Batumi in Georgia in September, and two others in Dubai, the WTA’s venue of choice, in October.
Ireland has seven nominations in 12 categories for tonight’s awards. This sounds impressive, until you look at what other countries have been doing to make the list.
USA leads the list
The USA has 122 nominations, followed by Vietnam with 73, Portugal and South Africa with 58 each, Australia and Italy with 47 each, Thailand with 42, Greece with 41, China with 38, France with 37, New Zealand with 36, England and Spain with 34 each, Canada and Japan with 26 each, India with 23, Fiji with 19, Malaysia with 18, and Ireland and Switzerland with 12 each.
If that sounds like an implausibly large number of nominations it is. There are 4,000 nominees for 285 awards.
That means some destinations are over represented and some huge tourist destinations are virtually ignored: Scotland has 8, Germany has 52 UNESCO world heritage sites but 6 nominations, Austria (13 UNESCO world heritage sites) and Norway (7 UNESCO world heritage sites) have 4 nominations each, Sweden (13 UNESCO world heritage sites) has 3, Czech Republic (16 UNESCO world heritage sites) has 2 and Denmark (8 UNESCO world heritage sites) just one.
The change in 2015
The WTAs were not on the radar for Ireland’s tourism industry until 2015, when a massive expansion of categories and the introduction of an award for World’s Leading Tourist Attraction first drew the attention of the masters of marketing from Ireland’s tourist industry.
The industry in Ireland does not have a tradition of chasing international awards. It relies on strong support among lead guide publications and platforms, such as Tom Oliver of Lonely Planet, to feature on annual lists. It has served us well.
Guinness Storehouse noticed the new category, nominated themselves and won the European category. It is not an exaggeration to say that, until then, even established travel writers in Ireland had never heard of the World Travel Awards.
They were beaten by Las Vegas strip, with marketing and muscle beyond the dreams of even Diageo.
Titanic Belfast went further in 2016 and won the world award. The world ‘s leading must-to tourist attraction is Machu Pichu, with the right mix of accessibility and adventure. It is at a high altitude but manageable, and harder to get to than the other must-dos, such as the Pyramids of Giza or the world’s most visited museums in New York, Paris and London. But it was beaten by Titanic. Intramuros, historic walled area within the city of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. is the only other site to have taken the award away from Machu Pichu, in 2020.
While the Guinness Storehouse is Ireland’s most visited attraction the scale of the Titanic achievement is enormous. The world’s most visited museum, the Louvre, had 8.7m visitors, ten times the total of the Titanic. Titanic has only half the visitor numbers of the Storehouse, and sits in seventh place in Ireland on the pre-pandemid visitor numebr charts. Even within county Antrim, it is 200k visitors behind the Giant’s Causeway.
Nominate and organise
Once brought to our attention, it did not take long for Ireland to work out how the WTA’s are put together. You nominate yourself. You then organise your votes, which, in the age of the Internet depends on the size of your marketing reach, your database of contacts, and your ability to mobilise your footfall.
Traditionally, Ireland has been strong in these areas. We all remember how the Wolfe tones became the record of the millennium in a BBC internet poll and how an email survey seeking the most famous soccer player for Juventus was almost won by Ronnie O’Brien from Bray, who played just 15 minutes for the club in a Intertoto cup match. O’Brien was also in the running for Time magazine man of the year before he was ruled out because the magazine decided it had no room for whimsical candidates. By then he had accrued 57,000 votes to lead the poll.
Lots of wins for Portugal
So it is with the World Travel Awards. But other countries got there first. Until recently, Portugal ruled the list. They are still very prominent, but Asia is weighing in heavily in recent awards. Internet access is improving in Asia and Africa. Expect India to dominate in the near future.
There is no doubting the award winners in every category have some merit, but the method of choosing winners renders the win largely meaningless, especially when the title “World Travel Award” claimed on the basis of whoever can martial enough support on the internet.
The volume of categories and the inclusion of niche awards (“gin distillery tour of the year”) makes this a very complicated and confusing process for everyone, often even those who use their nomination status or, better still, their victory, to boost their profile.
In the business of getting attention and delivering your merits to international tourists, it is a noisy world out there and difficult to be heard. Awards, even spurious ones, have become part of the armoury of the marketeers. Just county the plaques outside your local awards. The World Travel Awards are of great benefit to everyone who wins, and by extension, to tourism as an industry.
But, just as in 1994, when they began with their grandiose title, it is not matched by the gritty reality of visitor attractions, having to dragoon support to bolster their chances of winning.
There are FIVE winners from Ireland at the European WTA awards ceremony
- Europe’s Leading Luxury Wedding Resort: Luttrellstown Castle Resort
- Europe’s Leading Meetings & Conference Centre: Convention Centre Dublin
- Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction: Guinness Storehouse
- Europe’s Leading Whiskey Distillery Tour: Jameson Distillery Bow St.
- Europe’s Leading Beer Tour Visitor Experience: Guinness Storehouse
Good luck to the Irish nominees
- World’s Leading Beer Tour Visitor Experience 2023: Coors Brewery Tour, United States, Guinness Storehouse, Ireland, Maui Brewing Company – Kihei Tasting Room, Hawaii, Miller Brewery Tour, United States, Tiger Brewery Tour, Singapore,
- World’s Leading Distillery Tour 2023: Beefeater Gin Distillery, England, Casa BACARDÍ, Puerto Rico, Casa Martini, Italy, Château de Cognac, France, Heaven Hill Distillery, Hennessy, Jack Daniel Distillery, USA, Jameson Distillery Bow St., Ireland, Jim Beam Distillery, USA, Jose Cuervo, Mexico, Le Palais Bénédictine, France, Martell, France, Mount Vernon, New York Distilling Company, Pearse Lyons Distillery, Ireland, Rabbit Hole Distillery, USA, Santa Teresa Rum, Suntory Hakushu Distillery, Suntory Yamazaki Distillery, Japan, The Glenfiddich Distillery, The Glenlivet, Scotland, The Macallan Distillery, Scotland, Tullamore D.E.W. Visitor Centre, Ireland,
- World’s Leading Iconic Tourist Bridge 2023: Capilano Suspension Bridge, Canada, Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, Ireland, Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge, Switzerland, Golden Bridge @ Sun World Ba Na Hills, Vietnam, Golden Skybridge, Canada, Henderson Waves Bridge, Singapore, Highline179, Austria, Mishima Skywalk, Japan, Panorama Langkawi, Malaysia, Sky Walk Suspension Bridge, Costa Rica, Tolerance Bridge, Dubai Water Canal, UAE,
- World’s Leading Tourist Attraction 2023: Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE, Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, Grand Canyon National Park, USA, Great Wall of China, Guinness Storehouse, Ireland, Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, IMG Worlds of Adventure, UAE, Intramuros, Philippines, Las Vegas Strip, USA, Machu Picchu, Peru, Magic Kingdom Park, Walt Disney World Resort Florida, USA, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania, Niagara Falls, Canada, Table Mountain, South Africa, Taj Mahal, India, teamlab Planets TOKYO DMM, Japan, The Acropolis of Athens, Greece, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, UAE,
- World’s Leading Whiskey Distillery Tour 2023: Jack Daniel Distillery, USA, Jameson Distillery Bow St., Ireland, Pearse Lyons Distillery, Ireland, Suntory Yamazaki Distillery, Japan, The Glenfiddich Distillery, Scotland, The Glenlivet, Scotland, Tullamore D.E.W. Visitor Centre, Ireland,
- World’s Leading Luxury Wedding Resort 2023: Four Seasons Resort Mauritius at Anahita, Four Seasons Resort Seychelles, Grand Resort Lagonissi, Greece, InterContinental Bali Resort, Indonesia, InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort, Vietnam, JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort & Spa, Vietnam, Luttrellstown Castle Resort, Ireland, Rome Cavalieri, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Italy, San Clemente Palace Kempinski Venice, Italy, Waldorf Astoria Dubai Palm Jumeirah, UAE,
- World’s Leading Meetings & Conference Centre 2023: Ágora Bogotá Convention Centre, Colombia, Cancun ICC, Mexico, Centro Citibanamex, Mexico, Costa Rica Convention Centre, Dubai World Trade Centre, Dubai, UAE, Durban ICC, South Africa, ExCeL London, England, Exhibition World Bahrain, International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney), Australia, Las Vegas Convention Centre, USA, Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (MITEC), Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Australia, Montego Bay Convention Centre, Jamaica, Qatar National Convention Centre, Riocentro Convention & Event Centre, Brazil, Seattle Convention Centre, USA, Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre, The Convention Centre Dublin, Ireland, Wish Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil,
