The Awards

The Canadian e-Tourism awards are organized hierarchically in five levels from Bronze to Diamond (the Yahoo! Big Chair Award) based on three industry categories: Best Website, Best Online Campaign, Best Innovation and on three traveller categories (Best Canadian Travel Story, Best Canadian Travel Photo, Best Canadian Travel Video). Each category consists of three sub-sections that each gives awards for nominees and honourable mentions. Total there will be more than fifty (50) awards given out.

This scheme is designed to permit recognition for all outstanding submissions while allowing the best-of-the-best to rise to the top.

The awards for the Gold, Platinum, and Diamond categories will be given out during a special event on November 8th, 2007 in conjunction with the Canada-e-Connect Strategy Conference in Vancouver, BC.

Bronze and Silver level winners will receive their prizes directly by mail following the November 8th awards ceremony.

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How are the awards judged?

Each entry will be reviewed and scored by a panel of experts, all of whom are members of the Canadian e-Tourism Council.  The e-Tourism Council was established as a forum of approximately fifty (50) marketing strategy experts and e-commerce executives from the different sectors of the Canadian Tourism Industry, including DMOs, PMOs, Hotel, Air, Rail, Tour, OTA, Media, SME, etc. This group is involved in providing advice for both the Canada-e-Connect conference, and judging for the Canadian e-Tourism awards.

Due to the different requirements for each award category, each category has their own value.

As a unique twist, eligible entries will also be displayed online in a special location that invites Users input their own “Viewer’s Choice” score. This score will be added to the "Expert’s Panel" score as well as the “Canada Experience Filter” score, to determine the final result.

What are the prizes?

Bronze: A “Standard of Excellence Award”, Bronze recognizes entries that received a final score of 7 out of 10.

Silver (36): These are the three nominees in each of the four sector categories (i.e. Online Campaign for SMEs), that will be nominated to compete for the top sector website in each category.

Gold (12): These are the winners for each sector in the four categories (i.e. Online Campaign for SMEs, Best User-Generated Content Story Telling), which will be able to compete for the top category award (Best Website; Best Online Campaign, Best Innovation; Best User-Generated-Content).

Platinum (4): These are the top category awards (Best Website; Best Online Campaign, Best Innovation; Best User-Generated-Content), which will be eligible for the “Best of Show Award” (except the User-Generated Content Award). If the “Expert Panel Scores” of the eligible Gold winners are too close or the same, the “Viewers Choice Score” will determine the Platinum winners.

Diamond (1): This is the “Best of Show Award” given by Yahoo! Canada.