Jun 08 2016.
views 504On June 7, Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts concluded the Cinnamon Travel Bloggers Conference (TBCasia) at the Cinnamon Grand, Colombo. The conference witnessed many speakers from NatGeo, Digital Jungle, PATA, DIA and TravelClick Inc among others.
The conference was followed by the inaugural Travel Blogger Awards, which is the first of its kind to give recognition to some of the world’s most leading and inspirational travel bloggers. From over a staggering number of 700 submissions for theseawards, 30 were shortlisted across 10 different categories and judged by an independent panel of 6 consisting of Mario Hardy (CEO, PATA) Jens Thraenhart (Founder, Digital Innovation Asia), Jan Tissera (President, TravelClick International), Sally Davey (Founder, Tripbod.com), Debbie Hindle (Managing Director, Four Travel) and Dileep Mudadeniya (Head of Brand Marketing, Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts).
At the ceremony, Mr. Krishan Balendra, President of Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts said “many industries award their heroes and today, we are honoured to make our contribution towards it as well.”
The event was graced by the presence of the Minister of Tourism Development and Religious Christian Affairs, Hon. John Amaratunga, and was witness to a selection of breath-taking performances by our local talent along with an outstanding five course sit down dinner.
3 nominees for each category was given a Bronze, Silver and Gold award accordingly. The Gold award winners are as follows;
• Best Optimization of Social Media – Melvin Boecher(Traveldudes)
• Best Responsible Tourism Blog – Hal and Christina (Travel for Wildlife)
• Best Travel Photography Blog – Adam and Hannah (Getting Stamped)
• Best Travel Video Blog – Jorden and Jenna (Stoked for Saturday)
• Best Food Blog – Niamh Shields (Eat Like a Girl) and Jodi Ettenberg (Legal Nomads)
• Best Luxury Travel Blog – Jayne Gorman (Girl Tweets World)
• Best Airline Blog – Alvin Lim (Alvinology)
• Best Writing in a Travel Blog – Kristin Addis (Be My Travel Muse)
• Best Up – Coming Travel Blogger – Marta Kulesza (In a Faraway Land)
• Best Travel Blog of the Year - Dave and Deb (Planet D) and Kiersten Rich (The Blonde Abroad)
A few surprise awards were also presented;
• Best East Coast Moment – Mridula Dwivedi (TravelTales from Indi)
• My Best Sri Lankan Moment- Alvin Lim (Alvinology)
• Mobitel Care Moment - Mridula Dwivedi (TravelTales from Indi)
Cinnamon TBC Asia was presented by Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts in association with the Professional Travel Bloggers Association (PTBA) and the national carrier SriLankan airlines, and is also supported by Market Development Facility supported by the Australian government, Uptown Kandy, IFC, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, Reap Digital, TravelClick, Revinate, Mobitel, Cvisit, PATA, Four Communications, Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Wijeya Newspapers and E FM.
By Panchali Illankoon
Photographs by Manoj Ratnayake
0 Comments
George Kane says:
Jun 10, 2016 at 12:00 amPlease don't go to Sri Lanka if you love wildllfe. At the moment their President has agreed to give illegally captured baby elephants back to the owners who killed the mother elephants and stole the babies from the wild. They stole more than one hundred elephants. Their DG WIldlife has given his resignation letter because of this corrupt action by the owners and the President. Its much better to avoid this cruel place until they learn to treat their elephants well and let them back into the wil