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world travel awards

WHAT ARE THE WORLD TRAVEL AWARDS?

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The World Travel Awards are an initiative designed to recognize and reward industry leaders in the hotel, tourism, airline and hospitality sectors around the world. 

The idea behind the World Travel Awards programme is the celebration of excellence in various aspects of the tours, travel and hospitality sectors. It is intended to identify, support and reward excellence and growth of the world of tourism and travel. 

The awards act as incentives to the industry players, encouraging them to always improve their products and service delivery to their respective clientele. They are to the tourism industry what the NFL MVP award represents for football players.

Some industry players have even touted the World Travel Awards as being the Oscars of the hospitality industry. But how did it come to be?

History

Established in 1993 by a company known as World Media and Events Limited, the World Travel Awards company is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. 

During its 26 years of existence, the endowment programme has cemented its position as the most recognized and highly esteemed hallmark of achievement in the hospitality industry. The distinguished award bestows annual honours upon various industry players through its regional gala ceremonies across hundreds of categories. 

The World Travel Awards company also runs three other affiliate awards, namely; the World Golf Awards, World Ski Awards and the World Spa Awards. 

Categories

The award categories are based on the utility and vitality of the sector and its product(s). To date, there are thirteen (13) main categories, each with its subcategories. Leading the pack is the Technology Technology category, which carries a colossal 55 subcategories. 

At a distant second is the Hotels and Resorts category with 26 subcategories. The Destination category and the Travel and Tour Operators category each carry 9 subcategories. The groups with the least subcategories are Meetings and Conventions, Rail, Attraction, General and Villas. Each of these groups has a single subcategory.

Nomination

To be in the running for an award, the interested participants must present their entries online on the World Travel Awards website. The self-nomination then goes to a jury of experts sourced from the World Travel and Tourism Council who vet the entry against a set qualification criteria following the nomination rules.  

Successful applicants will then receive an invoice indicating the entry fees payable. For the Country/ Sub-region awards, the entry fee is £399 while that for the Regional Awards and the Technology Awards is £499.

Once the contender pays the respective fee, they will receive a ‘Nominee Package.’ This package is made up of a nominee shield, web banners, a ‘vote for us’ button and a web page. It is on this web page upon that the nominees will then market their nomination and solicit votes from the general public once voting opens.

Of note, is that the global/ final winner from the preceding year as well as two runners up gain automatic qualification the following year and need no nomination.

Voting

Anyone may vote by registering online on the World Travel Awards website. There are two categories of voters; Standard and Travel Industry voters. The standard voter carries the weight of one vote, while the Travel Industry voter has two votes. The World Travel Awards ascertains industry voters by requiring them to submit their company details and association membership number during their registration.

The registration requirements are not the only precondition that industry voters face. There is also the requirement that industry voters must submit a minimum of ten (10) votes each to qualify for the weightier vote privilege that comes with the title.

After a period of spirited campaigns, the company tallies the votes and announces the winners in the respective categories during the annual Galas discussed below. 

Award Galas

The World Travel Awards’ jury has annual tours across all the continents.  During these tours, the World Travel Awards hosts galas attended by big wigs in the hospitality, tours and travel sectors. Members of the media fraternity too are at hand to cover these glamorous ceremonies. 

Specifically, for 2019, the regional galas are slated to take place in the following locations; in Europe (Madeira, Portugal), Middle East (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Africa & the Indian Ocean (Mauritius), Latin America (La Paz, Bolivia), North America & the Caribbean (Jamaica) and Asia & Oceania (Phu Quoc, Vietnam).

The emerging regional winners at these continental gala ceremonies then compete on the global stage. The World Travel Awards then announces these final winners late in the year during the Grand Final Tour.

This year, the Grand Final Tour is set to take place in Muscat, Oman. 

So far, most continents have already completed the regional awards and are set for the finals. 

Among the big players, participating in the most categories in each continent are South Africa (Africa), Mexico (Central America), Greece (Europe), Maldives (Indian Ocean), UAE (Middle East), US (North America) and Ecuador (South America).

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Who is Liv Boeree?

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Olivia “Liv” Boeree is a British poker player as well as a television presenter, science communicator, writer, model, speaker and charity supporter. She was born on July 18, 1984, in Kent, England.

Her poker career kicked off in 2005 when she got selected as one of five contestants in the reality TV show “Ultimate Poker Showdown.” She showed a great talent for the card games from the start and was able to take her game to the next level with help from famous high rollers such as Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke and Dave Ulliott.

Her first real breakthrough came in 2010 when she won the European Poker Tour (EPT) event in Sanremo. At that time, this was the biggest poker tournament held in Europe, during which Boeree crushed her opponents and won €1,250,000. She was the third woman in history to win an EPT title.

She continued her streak of wins, and in 2017, at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, she won the $10,000 No-Limit Hold ‘em Tag Team Championship for $273,964 in a team effort, along with her boyfriend (and a legendary poker player in his own right), Igor Kurganov.

Boeree continues to travel around the world under the banner of Team PokerStars Pro. And as of 2017, her total live poker tournament winnings amount to more than $3,500,000.

But being one of the top poker players in the world is only one of the hats that Boeree currently wears. She started her higher education at Ashford School, Kent, and went on to earn First Class Honors degree in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Manchester. Her lifelong interest in physics, game theory and education inspired her to give her first TEDx Talk in Manchester in February 2018. Moreover, she was a guest speaker at Oxford University as well as many other educational and business institutions around the world, including the Google HQ in Mountain View, California. 

She also has a growing YouTube channel where she explores profound scientific ideas in a light-hearted way. On the list of her videos, you can find the ones about supercomputers, the physics of water wheels or a lecture about the engineering of the Panama Canal. With wide-ranging interests and passions, Liv Boeree is a real modern polymath, leaving no stone unturned in her pursuit of knowledge. Even in the profile photo on her Twitter account (which has over 140,000 followers), she poses with an owl, a symbol of wisdom.

In addition to poker tournaments, Boeree frequently appears on stage as a powerful speaker at conferences such as TED.
Image by Web Summit / CC-BY 2.0

Boeree’s brand goes way beyond social media and the internet. She appeared on television numerous times and worked with production companies such as the Discovery Channel, Red Bull TV, Channel 4, NBC, BBC as well as ITV. In her programs, she often talks about persuasion, mind manipulation or game theory. She’s a persuasive speaker and always keeps her cool, which contributes to her success in the poker sphere, too. 

Finally, she and her boyfriend Igor Kurganov are deeply involved in charity work and the “effective altruism” movement popularized by a young scholar William MacAskill. The idea behind this philosophy is to make the world a better place by transferring funds only to the most effective charities that can make the most significant positive impact in the world. Boeree is also a founder and ambassador for Raising for Effective Giving or REG Charity, which encourages poker players to give away parts of their earnings to charitable causes. 

In the future, expect Boeree to continue exploring her intellectual interests and sharing valuable insights with the world. She’s not only a talented poker player but also an individual gifted with an insatiable curiosity and thirst for new knowledge. It doesn’t matter if she’s involved in developing her poker career, charity work or another television gig, there is always something new and exciting on her to-do list.

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What are Ztringz?

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Ztringz are rainbow ropes

Ztringz is the modern variant of the ropes where you used to join the Eifel tower, or the cup and saucer. They are coloured strings (in all colours of the rainbow). It is ideal toys because it has no small parts but is small, you can do it on your own but also with others and it is not very expensive and it also fits in your pocket so you can always have it with you. With the rope you can make many figures: the well-known cup and saucer also make a parachute or a Jacobs Ladder. Because you have to have enough fine motor skills, that advice is age from 5 years old, but of course you can also play with it at that age. And Youtube has enough picture clips to be able to create the pictures without moeielijke drawings as instructions. So Read More

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What is Eweka?

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Eweka is a usenet provider

Eweka Internet Services was founded in 2001 in The Netherlands. Eweka Internet Services is a quality driven internet provider, specialized in offering a high-grade Usenet service for consumer users from our own datacenter in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

As an Eweka customer you will never be forced to have to deal with an outside party to get your Usenet access. When you work with Eweka you’re working with our in-house team and not an external third party.

Eweka now owns a self-built and managed network with POP locations in Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt and more, which guarantees solid and stable connections. In addition to their own network, they also use services from professional partners around the world. Eweka manages all their own routings and IP addresses. At Eweka Internet Services, the quality of the network is the highest priority.

Unlike others in the market, Eweka manages their own trans-Atlantic backbone including fiber connections.

Sign up for a (trial) Eweka account

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What is Shutterstock?

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Shutterstock is a stockphoto company

Shutterstock is an American stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools provider headquartered in New York City. Founded in 2003 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of around 125 million royalty-free stock photos, vector graphics, and illustrations, with around 4 million video clips and music tracks available for licensing. Originally a subscription site only, Shutterstock expanded beyond subscriptions into a la carte pricing in 2008, and has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2012. Since its founding Shutterstock has acquired a handful of other companies, starting with Bigstock in 2009 and followed by digital asset management software provider WebDAM in 2014. After acquiring Rex Features and PremiumBeat in 2015, Shutterstock recently announced a partnership with the Associated Press. It also has licensing deals with companies such as Penske Media Corporation. The company had over 100,000 contributors as of March 2016, with an “active customer base of 1.4 million people in 150 countries.”

Source: Wikipedia

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How to carve a pumpkin?

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Pumpkin carving is a fun Halloween tradition that’s popular among both children and adults. To carve your own pumpkin, you’ll first need to purchase or pick one from a local farmer’s market or pumpkin patch. Make a clean workspace to do the carving in, and trace or draft your design on the side of the pumpkin before you begin cutting. Remember also that you’ll need to scoop out all of the seeds from the pumpkin’s interior. Make sure to keep knives away from young children, and supervise older children who want to cut their own pumpkin.

Source: Wikihow

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What is Kodi?

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Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open-source media player software application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium

Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media.

It is a multi-platform home-theater PC (HTPC) application. Kodi is highly customizable: a variety of skins can change its appearance, and various plug-ins allow users to access streaming media content via online services such as Amazon Prime Instant Video, Crackle, Pandora Internet Radio, Rhapsody, Spotify, and YouTube. The later versions also have a personal video-recorder (PVR) graphical front end for receiving live television with electronic program guide (EPG) and high-definition digital video recorder (DVR) support.

The software was created as an independently developed homebrew media player application named Xbox Media Center (abbreviated as XBMC) for the first-generation Xbox game console, and was later made available under the name XBMC as a native application for Android, Linux, BSD, macOS, iOS/tvOS, and Microsoft Windows-based operating systems.

Source: Wikipedia

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What is Narcos?

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Narcos is a TV series

Narcos is an American crime drama web television series created and produced by Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro. Season 1, comprising 10 episodes, originally aired on August 28, 2015, as a Netflix exclusive.[1]

Set and filmed in Colombia, season 1 tells the story of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, who became a billionaire through the production and distribution of cocaine, while also focusing on Escobar’s interactions with drug lords, DEA agents, and various opposition entities.[2][3] The series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on September 2, 2016 with 10 episodes.[4] On September 6, 2016, Netflix renewed the series for a third and fourth season.[5] The third season will premiere on September 1, 2017

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Who is Garth Brooks?

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Troyal Garth Brooks is an American country singer and songwriter

His integration of rock and roll elements into the country genre has earned him immense popularity in the United States. Brooks has had great success in the country single and album charts, with multi-platinum recordings and record-breaking live performances, while also crossing over into the mainstream pop arena.

According to the RIAA, he is the best-selling solo albums artist in the United States with 148 million domestic units sold, ahead of Elvis Presley, and is second only to The Beatles in total album sales overall. He is also one of the worlds best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 160 million records.

(As of September 23, 2016) Brooks is now the only artist in music history to have released seven albums that achieved diamond status in the U.S. Those being; Garth Brooks (10 platinum), No Fences (17 platinum), Ropin the Wind (14 platinum), The Hits (10 platinum), Sevens (10 platinum), Double Live (21× platinum), and The Ultimate Hits (10 platinum). Since 1989, Brooks has released 21 records in all, which include: 12 studio albums, 1 live album, 3 compilation albums, 3 Christmas albums and 4 box sets, along with 77 singles. He won several awards in his career, including 2 Grammy Awards, 17 American Music Awards (including the Artist of the 90s) and the RIAA Award for best-selling solo albums artist of the century in the U.S.

Source: Wikipedia

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