The evening was all about celebrating travel blogging. Considering the phenomenal growth of the industry in the last two years, HostelBookers felt like it was the right time to put the limelight on bloggers working hard to innovate and entertain within their field. The range of different awards given out, they felt, reflected the amount of variety and talent out there.
The Nominations
Categories covered everything from photography to video to family blogging within the travel sphere, with five nominees selected for each. Nominees were chosen based on a panel decision at HostelBookers HQ, where a team of six put forward their ideas for each category and decided final nominations as a group.
It was then put to a public vote to decide the winners. Over 1500 votes were cast in the final count.
The winners in full
Epic Photography Award
Winner: Erica and Shaun from overyonderlust.com
Runner-up: Kirsten from aviatorsandacamera.com
Most Helpful Award
Winner: Dave and Deb from theplanetd.com
Runner-up: Chris from rtwlabs.com
Fun Award
Winner: Alexandra from crazysexyfuntraveler.com
Runner-up: Will from willpeach.com
Nom Nom Award for Food Reporting
Winner: Jodi from legalnomads.com
Runner-up: Ayngelina from baconismagic.ca
Best Mum/Dad Blogger Award
Winner: The Vogel Family from familyonbikes.org
Runner-up: Lainie from raisingmiro.com
Travel Blogger Oscars Award For Video Blogging
Winner: Cailin O’Neill from travelyourself.ca
Runner-up: Jane from runawayjane.com
Community Spirit Award
Winner: Dan and Audrey from uncorneredmarket.com
Runner-up: Brett and Mary from greenglobaltravel.com
Favourite Newcomer
Winner: Kiersten from theblondeabroad.com
Runner-up: Becki from backpackerbecki.com
Special Award for the Late Night Blogger
Winner: Monica from thetravelhack.com
Runner-up: Justin from 48houradventure.com
Services to the Travel Industry
Winner: G Adventures (gadventures.com)
Runner-up: Travel Massive (travelmassive.com)
The response
WTM is a whirlwind of events for the Industry, this year more than ever with meet-ups during WTM as well as the week preceding the awards. Bloggers might have understandably have been running a bit ragged by this point, but there was a good turn out.
Response in the aftermath of the first HostelBookers Travel Blogger Awards was positive. The hashtag #HBloggerlove has also received over 3 million impressions to date.
Industry comment was favourable too. Michael Ball from Travel Massive said:
Bloggers, by the nature of what they do, are on their own a lot of the time. So having an awards ceremony is such a great way for the travel community to show that they do recognise all of the great and hard work that goes into creating these fantastic blogs. Even if sometimes they can feel like they’re slogging away for very little.
HostelBookers hope to do it all again and put on a bigger and better awards during WTM 2013.
Will you be there?
Feature image: Bigstock/Fer Gregory
Other photos: Hostelbookers
Post Revisions:
- 16 November, 2012 @ 13:50 [Current Revision] by Lezaan Roos
- 16 November, 2012 @ 13:50 by Alastair McKenzie
Sounds like an amazing event, great to hear about it here ! Hope to be there one day celebrating with you guys – great community spirit :)
Aw, so nice of you to write about the awards here :) I am still happy about winning my category :)
Congratulations :)
why was there no news coverage on the fabulous star designs people were wearing? People looked absolutely fierce that evening.
We didn’t attend the awards unfortunately, so I can’t really comment on the outfits. Perhaps you could do a related feature for a Fashion news media site :)
Oh, the comment was only of half serious in nature, as I was quite drunk and placed star patterns on many attendees – I am not sure I could do an appropriate article on getting pissed and molesting people with stickers. Let me know though. I do like to drink and do arts and crafts.
As was mine, only half serious in nature. ;)
I can honestly say this was the best after party I went to during WTM! Was a great night, and it was nice to be runner up for most entertaining videos! I will definitely come again if they hold another one next year! :)