MATATO announced at ITB Berlin, the opening of bid opportunities to host Maldives Travel Awards – Grand Gala 2017. Maldives Travel Awards, the most prestigious travel event in the Maldives that has been celebrating and recognizing the very best Maldives tourism and hospitality has to offer for the last five years. The travel awards initiated in 2012 by MATATO, a nonprofit organization in the Maldives to promote, foster and create opportunities for SMEs of local travel agents, and engage in creating opportunities to promote Maldives on the global stage.
Initiated in 2012 by MATATO, the Maldives Travel Awards main objective is to celebrate and award the best tourism and hospitality products in Maldives and even further build the relationships with suppliers and local travel agents. In the past, the travel awards have been hosted in some of the scenic resorts such as Paradise Island Resort, Coco Boduhithi, Olhuveli Beach Resort, Kurumba Maldives, and Paradise Island Resort. Its international edition happened at Dusit Thani Dubai.
Some of the travel trade fairs participated by MATATOs own initiative such as SATTE New Delhi, BITB New Delhi, MATTA Malaysia, MAKTA Finland, PATA Mart Jakarta, and Riyadh Fair – Saudi Arabia, Luxury Leisure Moscow; have been used to promote these awards and its winners. Some of the other fairs have been organized by MMPRC such as ITB Berlin, WTM London, ATM Dubai; where MATATO promoted these as well.
MATATO held the travels awards 2016 edition in parallel to Maldives Travel Conference with expert speakers from PATA, CNN, TTG Asia, and Tamassath University. This year the plan is to combine the grand gala with the travel conference happening a day before the awards thus bringing an international audience of industry experts to these events. MATATO also signed an MOU last year with PATA- Pacific Asia Travel Association, the largest travel organization in the region and having the MATATO events supported and endorsed by PATA. In 2016 the awards also saw unprecedented judging transparency with a service agreement signed with KPMG to tally the final results.
The plans for 2017 is to expand the awards into three editions:
Maldives Travel Awards: People’s Edition
The Maldives Travel People’s Award Edition will be hosted at the Gala night for Travel Trade Maldives, TTM in July 2017. It is aimed at recognizing successful pioneers and long serving individuals in the travel industry of Maldives. These categories of people will be recognized for contributing to the growth of the sector and their talent, individual contributions and achievements will be rewarded.
Maldives Travel Awards: Guesthouse Edition
This edition will be introduced this year to celebrate the outstanding performance of this sector. It will have 15 categories. The Winners will be announced at the closing evening for Guesthouse Conference organized by Maldives Getaways scheduled to September 2017.
Maldives Travel Awards: Grand Gala Night
Gala Night is the premier event for Maldives Travel Industry and a continuation of the past. It will be exclusive for winners in the categories for Resorts, Airlines and Liveaboards. It will be hosted in one of the country’ leading resorts in November or October 2017.
MATATO will also have the second edition of Maldives Travel Conference in 2017, held a day ahead of Maldives Travel Awards Gala Night.
For more details on the bid documents please contact MATATO Secretariat.
