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.

To enter you can do so at: www.thinkdigital.travel/x-awards/home#enter
Once on the page, you can choose whether you want to enter one project or multiple ones by clicking on the correct form. There are available discounts for those who want to enter multiple projects. Applications can only be entered digitally.

The form is divided into four sections:

• 1. General Information
  Fill in information about yourself and your organisation.

• 2. Project/Campaign Description
  This section will cover information about your entry.

• 3. Demonstrating the Four Pillars
  In this section questions will cover the four pillars: Strategy, Creativity, Impact and Results. Answer the questions, clearly identifying how your entry meets the four pillars.

• Additional Materials
  You may submit any relevant additional material for review. Additional materials can also be added later to support your X. Award submission. To do so, you can email info@thinkdigital.travel with any data that you feel is relevant.

If you are a member, the form will automatically take your personal details for '1. General Information', so you won’t need to fill this in.

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 2023).

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 1st of November and winners will be announced on the 10th 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.

‍Please review the X. Awards Evaluation Criteria for a more detailed breakdown of the guidance on scoring, which can be found here.

The judging process is divided into two key stages: The Shortlist Round and The Winning Round.

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 (Strategy, Creativity, Execution & Impact) 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.

The entries are evaluated by the DTTT Knowledge Team and a panel of external judges.

All submissions will automatically be entered in the People’s Choice Award. A social media campaign will be launched after submissions close, where the public will vote to determine the winner.