The UK based business travel magazine, Business Destinations, has recently published a list of winners of the Business Destinations Annual Travel Awards. Various facilities and organizations like convention centres, airports or tourism authorities were evaluated. Many famous brands like Hilton hotels reached the top. However, even the smaller ones got recognized.
Taj Hotels in North America, Golden Tulip in Africa and Shangri La in Asia were the winners in the category “best hotel chain”. The five star luxury Hotel President in the Czech Republic has gained the award in category “best small business hotel” for Central Europe. Another Central European winner was the Czech Tourism Authority known as CzechTourism.
The top position in the “best long haul airline” category was given to Virgin Atlantic. The “best convention centre” is Amsterdam Rai. This huge exhibition ground occupies 87,000 square metres and provides 11 multifunctional halls. The full list of winners is available at the Business Destinations’ web page.
A panel of experts chose the nominees from various areas of the tourism industry. The panel picked nominees using criteria such as innovation, originality and quality of product. They also concentrate on the long term strategies and looked for organizations that are likely to dominate the market in the next 12 months despite the global economic downturn. The readers of Business Destinations where then asked to vote on the panel’s nominees in an online poll.
The first Business Destinations Travel Awards are gone. It is time to think about the next year. Planning for the Business Destinations Travel Awards 2009 is already in progress.
