FAQs

The X. Awards are a celebration of the best of the best in tourism. After a couple of difficult years, we wanted to bring together the tourism community to recognise those destinations, businesses and/or organisations that have stood out for pivoting or continuing the work to support their industry and wider communities.

The X. Awards are hosted by the Digital Tourism Think Tank.

The DTTT is a professional industry platform that facilitates the exchange of knowledge, best practice, thought leadership and expertise on digital transformation and sustainable growth for the global tourism industry.

If you'd like to know more about the Awards, hosts or partnership opportunities get in touch at info@thinkdigital.travel or via our live chat.

The X. Awards are open to all organisations and individuals involved in the process of designing, creating, executing and/or promoting travel and tourism-related activities. These may be - although not limited to - destination marketing, experience providers and/or strategic programmes for the development of tourism initiatives.

To enter a project, campaign or initiative, the work must have been live or active within the past 18 months (from February 2021).

Agencies applying on behalf of their clients, e.g. a DMO, must provide clear approval to be named in a prize. Otherwise, the prize will be awarded to the client organisation.

All submissions must be entered by the 15th of October and winners will be announced on the 2nd of December.

All prices can be found here.

Currently, we're only accepting applications in English.

Entries are evaluated by a Jury on the following four key pillars:

Strategy: This pillar is about understanding the role of a particular project or campaign in the overall aim or long-term vision of the company or organisation. To best respond to strategy in entries, it's important to explain - and where possible - provide any supporting material that clearly demonstrates the connection between the entry and the strategy behind it.

‍Creativity: To showcase creativity provide examples of how the entry stands out. This may be focused on the artistic concept, strategy or vision behind it and/or its impact.

‍Execution: This refers to the delivery of the particular project or campaign. A high-level execution will be one that can provide detailed examples of their team(s) ability to put their plans into action. Additionally, they will demonstrate reasoning behind their decisions and how it all feeds into their entry.
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‍Impact: An entry's impact is judged upon their planned engagement and how that compares to what they accomplished. For this category, it is advised to provide additional material that exemplifies social impact beyond numbers.

The judging process is divided into two key stages: the shortlist and the winning round.
Entries are evaluated on four key pillars: Strategy, Creativity, Execution and Impact.

1. The Shortlist Round
All entries are initially evaluated and processed by the knowledge team at the Digital Tourism Think Tank. The team will be looking out for the four key pillars and narrowing down a shortlist of 3 to 5 nominees per category that will be passed on to a select industry expert Jury.
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2. The Winning Round
In the final round, shortlisted nominees will be evaluated by an external judge from the UNWTO.

The entries are evaluated by the DTTT Knowledge Team and a set of experts from UNWTO.