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Awards programs can sometimes weave a tangled web. Organizations apparently can't afford to pay for their own prizes without help -- and naming rights -- from sponsors. Sometimes those sponsors are altruistic, or interested only in promoting themselves as good corporate citizens. Other times, it's harder to tell. In some cases, things can be pretty cozy between the watched and the watchers.
Take for example The Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC). It represents professional magazine and newspaper travel writers and travel and tourism companies (there are 450 members, only 40% of whom are travel journalists) and, once a year, gives out some 17 awards, this time at TMAC’s 12th Annual General Meeting and Conference, which was held in Calgary.
One of these awards, the "Excellence in Canadian Family Travel Writing Award", is sponsored by Days Inn - Canada. This year it was for an article written by Liz Fleming and published in the St. Catharines Standard. Fleming is described as a freelance writer and corporate writer through her own firm Liz Fleming Communications. She is also the Editor of Signature Travel, the inflight magazine for the charter airline Skyservice.
The prize was $1,000, a two-night stay at any Days Inn or Days Hotel across Canada and a plaque. “It’s a great honor to have my work recognized by Days Inns - Canada and I’m thrilled to be the recipient of this year’s award,” said Fleming, in a Days Inn press release. “Days Inn does a great service to the Canadian travel media community by sponsoring this competition for professional travel writers.”
Now, this raises a bunch of questions. One is whether, as a travel writer, Ms Fleming can ever again be entirely objective about Days Inn when writing family travel articles. Another is what is the relationship between her corporate writing and her, ostensibly objective, freelance work? The same questions could be raised about the other prizes, sponsored, and branded by, Fairmont Hotels, Starwood Hotels, Choice Hotels, Cayman Islands, and Vancouver Tourism.
These are questions unlikely to be answered -- or perhaps even raised -- by TMAC, whose own website proclaims the close relationship between the industry and the people who write about it. And membership benefits in TMAC include 75% discounts provided by Air Canada and VIA Rail (two of the biggest travel companies in the country) to get to its annual conference. Members also get a preferred rate at the Choice chain of hotels.
This is not to suggest that other awards programs -- most of which rely on sponsor income to a greater or lesser degree -- do so much better. But TMAC is a particularly good, or bad, example of how the sponsorship tail wags the awards dog.
Take for example The Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC). It represents professional magazine and newspaper travel writers and travel and tourism companies (there are 450 members, only 40% of whom are travel journalists) and, once a year, gives out some 17 awards, this time at TMAC’s 12th Annual General Meeting and Conference, which was held in Calgary.
One of these awards, the "Excellence in Canadian Family Travel Writing Award", is sponsored by Days Inn - Canada. This year it was for an article written by Liz Fleming and published in the St. Catharines Standard. Fleming is described as a freelance writer and corporate writer through her own firm Liz Fleming Communications. She is also the Editor of Signature Travel, the inflight magazine for the charter airline Skyservice.
The prize was $1,000, a two-night stay at any Days Inn or Days Hotel across Canada and a plaque. “It’s a great honor to have my work recognized by Days Inns - Canada and I’m thrilled to be the recipient of this year’s award,” said Fleming, in a Days Inn press release. “Days Inn does a great service to the Canadian travel media community by sponsoring this competition for professional travel writers.”
Now, this raises a bunch of questions. One is whether, as a travel writer, Ms Fleming can ever again be entirely objective about Days Inn when writing family travel articles. Another is what is the relationship between her corporate writing and her, ostensibly objective, freelance work? The same questions could be raised about the other prizes, sponsored, and branded by, Fairmont Hotels, Starwood Hotels, Choice Hotels, Cayman Islands, and Vancouver Tourism.
These are questions unlikely to be answered -- or perhaps even raised -- by TMAC, whose own website proclaims the close relationship between the industry and the people who write about it. And membership benefits in TMAC include 75% discounts provided by Air Canada and VIA Rail (two of the biggest travel companies in the country) to get to its annual conference. Members also get a preferred rate at the Choice chain of hotels.
This is not to suggest that other awards programs -- most of which rely on sponsor income to a greater or lesser degree -- do so much better. But TMAC is a particularly good, or bad, example of how the sponsorship tail wags the awards dog.
posted by D. B. Scott at
6:00 am
1 Comments:
DB, I think you have raised a serious issue facing the industry, one that is not talked about enough. However, I feel we really need to have better empirical evidence in order to truly measure the impact of the sponsorships. In an effort to seek truth, I am willing to offer myself as a test subject. I would voluntarily and with no self-interest, take on the burden of a sponsored trip to say, Barbados or Thailand, and see whether my neutrality is compromised with respect to my sponsors.
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