Do you have a business in tourism, travel, hospitality, events or retail that caters to the tourism market?
If so, you’re bound to have heard about the Tourism Awards programs around the country. Each year, each of Australia’s states and territories runs its own Tourism Awards programs and hosts their own state awards ceremonies to crown the winners in several award categories that align with all other states and territories. These categories include awards for Major Tourist Attractions, Cultural Attraction, Major Festivals and Events, Standard Accommodation, Eco Tourism, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Tourism Experiences, Tourism Retail and Hire Services (to name just some of the 26 award categories).
The awards process is super thorough and involves a combination of education for entrants, site visits by judges, and completion of a significant written submission to be reviewed and scored by an industry-leading panel of experts.
After the state winners are determined by a rigorous judging process culminating in an often glitzy awards ceremony, the winners from each category progress to the national awards – the Australian Tourism Awards. These national awards represent the peak of tourism success, the pinnacle awards program for the Australian tourism industry. Managed by the Australian Tourism Industry Council and sponsored by Qantas, these awards are the industry’s national standard of excellence.
But wait, before you pick out your suits and frocks and plan and pack for an interstate trip for an Australian Tourism Awards win, you’ll need to get through your state’s tourism awards process first.
Writing a tourism award submission
We often get asked about this, and we definitely don’t sugarcoat it. It’s a biggie. Pegged at around 8,000-10,000 words, your written submission is not a light ask. And it might have you harking back to school assessments with a list of sections and sub-questions to answer for each individual category, with your responses then marked and weighted.
Your answers to each question must be:
- Thorough enough to give the reader a good understanding of your business
- Able to address all individual criteria
- Specific and avoid generalisations
- Backed by clear examples and data
- Referring to activity that occurred in the submission period i.e. the most recent financial year
- Meeting the required word and images count.
The written submission can be daunting. With Threesides’ team having been involved in over 40 written submissions over the last 15 years, we can back the claim that the tourism awards process is one of the most exacting awards processes in any industry, and one not to be taken lightly.
Top tips for a tourism awards submission
With our experience in writing tourism awards submissions for entrants across four states and territories, here are our top tips:
- Take all the help you can get from the sources and resources on hand: Attend the webinars, take up the offer for reviews and guidance, and pay attention to the site visit feedback.
- Don’t leave it to the last minute: Whether you’re planning on doing it yourself or enlisting the help of a specialist writer, allow plenty of time. We recommend you start at least eight weeks prior to your deadline. And approach a writer even earlier than this.
- Refer to the category questions and criteria from the year prior: They don’t change often or too drastically so they will guide you for the next year and offer hints for the types of information and data you should be collecting throughout the year.
- Don’t underestimate the amount of time it takes to review, re-read, re-review, edit and review again after changes: It is definitely time consuming, and with such a large final word count, subsequent reviews take time. Getting the word count just right is also an art.
- Collect what you need as you go throughout the year: This includes examples of work, data, photos etc.
- Get your plans in order: Collect/create your plans such as Business Plans, Marketing Plans and Operational Plans and ensure they are clear, organised and accessible.
- Pull a team together: Many hands make light work, so ensure you have members of your team collecting the relevant information from the right sources.
- Build in time: Give yourself time to step away and come back to it, get a fresh pair of eyes over the final version, and ensure you include time for any approvals processes internally.
- A picture tells a thousand words: So ensure you have the best images available to tell your story.
- Give yourself time to upload: When your submission is ready, don’t underestimate the time required to upload it to the required awards portal.
- Enlist an expert for advice and assistance with writing (Threesides can assist!)
If you would like more information on the Tourism Awards process, get in touch with your state or territory’s tourism organisation. For information on the national awards, you can reach out to the Australian Tourism Industry Council.
If you’d like a hand with preparing for or writing a tourism awards submission in the future, feel free to get in touch with Threesides Marketing to find out how we can help.