Archive for category: News

Judges for the 2017 ASTW Awards for Excellence

Destination Canada took out the Communicator or Communications Team of the Year. Picture here is Nick Wayland from TravMedia, sponsor of the award, with Donna Campbell and Pip Macken

This year we were lucky to have a big pool of judges, with three judges per category.  Many of our judges live overseas and are members of our sister writing associations in the USA, New Zealand or the UK. All have considerable experience and we are lucky to have been able to utilise their expertise.

We thank each and every judge for giving so much of their time. We list them here, in alphabetical order.

Mark Andrews

Mark Andrews has been a travel writer and photographer for the last seventeen years. Over this time he has explored much of Asia and on the way lived in Japan, South Korea and now currently Shanghai, China. He feels that one of the best ways to get under the skin of a place is through the local food. Having experienced plenty of unusual dishes such as raw horsemeat and silkworm larvae, writing about his adopted city’s cuisine in this issue seemed positively tame.

Keith Austin

Originally from London’s East End, Keith Austin has worked as a chief sub, production editor, travel editor, feature writer, regular columnist, news reporter and restaurant reviewer. He is the author of three novels for young adults and has also edited two cookbooks and four editions of the NSW Good Pub Food Guide. He is passionate about food, drink, travel, writing, photography, humour and football. But not in that order.

Catherine Beattie

Catherine Beattie edits and publishes Spa Wellbeing – an online spa, travel and lifestyle magazine. She also blogs and reviews cruises, spas and hotels for travel websites and consumer magazines and writes tourism reports for Mintel. Catherine is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers.

Ewen Bell

Ewen Bell is a Melbourne based photographer and journalist. He currently shoots for UK editions of National Geographic Traveller, Lonely Planet Traveller and Food & Travel. He is the former Editor at Large for Digital Photography magazine in Australia and regular contributor to Digital Photography magazine in the UK. His focus is always on sharing what makes the world beautiful, and the inspiration to step outside your boundaries and experience it for yourself. “Travel is the most valuable gift you can give yourself.” photographyfortravellers.com

Anders Bergersen

Sue Bryant

Sue Bryant (@sjbryant) is an award-winning writer and editor specialising in travel. She is cruise editor of the Sunday Times, writes for Cruise Passenger and World of Cruising. Her work has also appeared in High Life, Food & Travel and TRVL magazine for iPad, among many others. Wearing a different hat, Sue is editor of Journeys magazine (@JourneysMagUK), the UK’s first glossy mag dedicated to experiential travel. She also edits Uno Stile di Vita, the guestroom magazine for Baglioni Hotels. Sue has also written or edited more than 25 travel books, from guidebooks about the Costa del Sol, Barcelona, Ibiza, Cyprus and Tel Aviv to Insight Guides’ Great River Cruises (Europe and the Nile). She has edited coffee table books, writes all the destination content for CountryNavigator.com and has produced cross-cultural training guides to more than 70 countries for executives going to live and work abroad. She lives in west London with her two teenagers, two dogs and some chickens.

Brian Crisp

Brian Crisp has been a journalist for more than 30 years. During that time he has worked for Fairfax, News Corp and the Daily Liberal in Dubbo. Brian launched the national version of Escape in print in 2009. He now works as the Head of News Corp Studios – Queensland, where sadly he doesn’t get to travel much anymore.

Andrew Daddo

Andrew’s been in and around travel his entire professional life – seems the psychic was right when she told him he’d travel the world for work when he was 18.  He’s travelled with The Great Outdoors, Lonely Planet, The Golf Show, writes for Holidays with kids, Escape and Fairfax travel.

Sue Dobson

Sue Dobson is an award-winning travel writer and magazine editor based in the UK, whose life-long passion for discovery and experiencing different cultures has taken her to every continent and into countries less travelled.

Hilary Doling

Hilary Doling is Editor in Chief of one of the world’s largest independent luxury travel websites, The Luxury Travel Bible (operating out of the UK and Australia) and Executive Editor of the glossy Five Star Kids magazine (Signature Media), devoted to luxury family travel. She started her career on London’s Fleet Street where she worked for newspapers such as The Times and The Guardian and for England’s glossy magazines. In search of sun she moved to Australia as Travel Editor at Fairfax newspapers (The Sun Herald) a position she held for twelve years and then became Editor in Chief of Luxury Travel Magazine. She is an international speaker on luxury hotels and travel, appearing at such events as ILTM Cannes and has visited every continent and set foot in more than 92 countries.

Paul Dymond

Paul has been a travel and nature photographer for nearly 16 years, was contracted to Lonely Planet Images (now Getty) for more than ten of those years and has been published in most of the big magazines that we love so much. He even won the ASTW Photographer of the Year back in the day when connecting to the Internet involved R2-D2-like sounds coming out of the modem. These days, as he balances the needs of a young family with being away with work, his business is moving more and more towards helping large organisations get a handle on their out-of-control image libraries, creating custom photographic and video databases so that they can more easily access and utilise these mostly untouched photographs. He is still represented by three major photo agencies and continues to do photographic work when it comes across his desk in Cairns.

Toni Eatts

During her impressive career as a journalist, Toni spent 10 years editing cruise publications, including Cruise Passenger magazine, and writing cruise stories aimed at passengers and travel industry professionals. Her articles have been published in The Australian, the Australian Financial Review, Cruise Passenger magazine, on Cruise Critic and in various trade publications. She also wrote three substantial cruise guidebooks for a leading travel chain.

Kerri Elstub

Kerri Elstub is a broadcast journalist with more than 20 years of industry experience. She has worked at Radio 2UE and Channel 9, where she was Supervising Producer on A Current Affair. Kerri is now Editor of 9Honey.

Paul Ewart

Paul is a Director/photographer with Peter Lik Publishing, a 20-year-old company that is well known and regarded for its production of premium publications and souvenirs using high quality photographic imagery. Paul previously worked for 14 years at Tourism Queensland as the Director – Creative Marketing Services, assuming responsibility for the quality and direction of the vast majority of imaging content in both stills and video format. Paul’s work can be found at Paulewart.photoshelter.com and on Instagram.com/paulewart1

Michelle Grima

Michelle Grima is an established media communications consultant based in the Blue Mountains. Having started her career at the Daily Telegraph in the late ‘80s, Michelle went on to manage national media for Tourism Tasmania, and now runs her own travel and lifestyle media business, Australia PR.

Stuart Innes

Stuart Innes was Travel Writer-Editor of The Advertiser newspaper in South Australia in the 80s and 90s and, until retiring in 2012, it’s Tourism Writer. He was one of the longest-serving ASTW committee members, including four terms as president during which he introduced the annual travel writing awards. He is a former judge of the South Australian Tourism Awards.

Justin Jamieson

Justin Jamieson is the founder and publisher of the award winning get lost Magazine, a 124 + page glossy travel magazine focusing on unique, boutique experiential travel. Justin can be heard discussing travel trends weekly on 2GB’s top rating Chris Smith Afternoon show and is a regular guest and co-host on 3AW’s number 1 travel and food program A Moveable Feast. He can also be heard on the Austereo networks, Talking Lifestyle and ABC nationally as well as guest spots on major TV networks and a regular guest on Sky News Travel. Justin launched get lost in 2004 hoping to scratch an insatiable travel bug. It seems to have made it worse.

Wendy Kay

Wendy Kay is an award-winning journalist, editor, columnist and executive producer with four decades of experience in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Launching her career as a newspaper cadet, she has won awards in Australia, Hong Kong and the UK for her investigative features, while her desire to broaden her journalistic skills led her to produce top-rating current affairs television and programs for Sydney’s major radio stations 2GB and 2UE. In between, a love for travel was ignited by Club Med and working around the world as a sports instructor and entertainer. She now freelances for newspapers and magazines and has relaunched her column Wendy’s World at wendysworld.com.au

Alan Kennedy

Alan has been a journalist for the past 40 years. He began his career with a cadetship on The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, and has worked throughout Australia and in London. After working on the development of Australian Business magazine in the early 1980s, he pursued a successful career as a freelance journalist, concentrating on the car industry. As motoring editor of both Australian Business and The Bulletin, he wrote extensively on industry policy. He spent 19 years at The Sydney Morning Herald – first, as motoring editor. He edited the Stay In Touch column for three years, before becoming deputy editor and then editor of the sports section. He returned to reporting for his last few years with the Herald, covering the America’s Cup and Olympic sailing, the AFL, Formula One and tennis. Alan has been a member of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA), now part of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), for 40 years and has been active in the union for most of that time. He chaired the Australian Consolidated Press House Committee, then, after joining the Herald, became chair of the Fairfax House Committee. He was president of the journalists’ section of the MEAA for eight years. He was on the Walkley Awards judging panel for nearly 10 years. He was a member of the Australian Press Council from 2005 until 2016. He left The Sydney Morning Herald at the end of 2005 and now works as a freelance journalist.

Matt Kirouac

Matt Kirouac is a Chicago-based food and travel writer, editor and author. A culinary school graduate with a management degree in hospitality, he’s been writing professionally for 10 years, for companies like Plate Magazine, Daily Candy, Saveur, Kimpton Hotels, TripExpert, Flight Network, Time Out, Food Fanatics magazine, Brand USA and numerous others. Currently, he works for Zagat, Money Inc. and other freelance positions. His first travel book, The Hunt Guides: Chicago, came out in 2016, and his next book, Unique Eats & Eateries of Chicago, hits shelves in 2017. Check out his work at www.mattkrc.com.

Shirley LaPlanche  

Shirley LaPlanche joined the ASTW mid-1980s while editor of the Hospitality Section for The Australian. In 1990 she went freelance writing on a regular basis for the Australian Tourist Commission and travelling extensively on stories for magazines and newspapers in Australia and overseas. Her deep interest in eco-tourism led her to write her book Stepping Lightly on Australia which was published in 1995 by HarperCollins and sold worldwide. She says she is now semi-retired but is still travelling as often as time and money allow and still writing the occasional piece for her favourite magazines and newspapers. This year she rejoined the ASTW in the newly established Friends category and looks forward to catching up with colleagues.

Jonas Larsson

Jonas Larsson has been the Swedish Creative Director for Scandinavian magazines for 20 years, and is currently working on the first issue of his own travel magazine, American Trails which will make its debut in November 2017.

Kerrie Lee

Kerrie Lee has been working in mainstream print media since 1967, as a writer, editor and sub-editor.

She has held senior staff positions, including as a sections editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and special projects editor for The Australian Women’s Weekly, but embraced the more flexible, if precarious, freelance life while raising her three children.

For 25 years, Kerrie wrote and edited travel for a variety of publications, but gave up the heady delights of the famil to do an honours degree in prehistoric archaeology.

Her passion for travel has never abated and, thanks to the phenomenon of house swapping, she’s able to spend prolonged periods overseas every year, documenting her adventures in a privately distributed blog.

Kerrie also taught subbing for many years via the MEAA and Sydney Community College, as well as in-house for major publishing companies, such as ACP (now Bauer) and Pacific.

Jim Mathers

Jim Mathers is the Head of Publishing, at RACQ, in Queensland. He currently manages the membership organisation’s Road Ahead magazine in print and digital forms (total circulation in excess of one million), including a magazine app and mobile-optimised edition. RACQ Publishing also runs the RACQ Living website and e-news series, with 12 e-newsletters circulating to a total of 500,000 recipients each month. Jim was a former member of the ASTW and has been involved in the communication industry for 35 years.

Ewan McDonald

Ewan McDonald has been Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor and Features Editor with NZME, publishers of the NZ Herald and other print and online platforms. He is president of Travcom, the NZ Association of Travel Writers, Photographers and Communicators, and is a multi-award winning travel writer.

Denise McNabb

Denise McNabb has specialised in aviation, travel and business writing and editing on both sides of the Tasman for more years than she cares to remember. She came to Sydney in 2009 as the first Australia correspondent for the Fairfax New Zealand group of newspapers and was editor of Aviation Business magazine in Sydney before she returned to New Zealand last year where she is a freelance writer. Denise was the first New Zealand journalist to win the Airservices Australia Aviation Journalist of the Year in 2008. In 2007 she won the inaugural NZ Brook Asset Management Business Journalist of the Year award.  She was inaugural secretary of New Zealand Travel Communicators when it was formed in 1992 after returning from her first stint in Australia where she was a member of the Australian Society of Travel Writers when travel editor of the Sunday Mail and the now defunct News in Adelaide.  She co-founded the New Zealand Herald travel section and created for its publishers the tourism magazine arrival for inbound travellers at Auckland Airport. She has written for Vacations & Travel Magazine, the aviation and the business travel section for The Independent Business Weekly, The Press and The Dominion Post in New Zealand, and News Local, Platinum magazine, the US-based Global Business Travel magazine, and travel trade publications.

Neil McQuillian

Neil McQuillian is a British travel writer and editor. His writing appears in print and online, including in The Telegraph, The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and on roughguides.com. As a senior editor at Rough Guides – which celebrated 35 years of publishing earlier this year – he commissioned forthcoming photobook You Are Here, featuring images from Rough Guides’ readers around the world. It publishes in Australia this October. The freshly updated Rough Guide to Australia (roughguides.com/shop/rough-guide-australia) was published in April.

Natascha Mirosh

Natascha Mirosch has worked in food writing for close to 20 years, both here and in the UK. Until April this year she was the editor of Fairfax Media’s Good Food Guide, QLD restaurant reviewer for goodfood.com.au and creative director of Good Food Month. At various stages of her career Natascha written about food for The Brisbane Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane News, Taste and The Courier Mail. Natascha currently freelances for a number of publications and runs a food PR business.

Angela Mollard

Angela Mollard is a columnist, commentator, journalist, corporate speaker and author. Her popular weekly column is published in News Corp titles each Sunday and she writes on all subjects from politics and parenting to travel and lifestyle. After beginning her career in New Zealand, she spent seven years working for London newspapers before moving to Sydney where she works across newspapers, digital, television and radio.

Sarah Monaghan

Sarah Monaghan is an award-winning British travel writer and specialist copywriter for travel and tourism. Her work has appeared in the travel pages of scores of national newspapers and magazines and she’s also worked in a PR capacity for many travel clients. She’s won the British Guild of Travel Writers’ Trade and Tourism Award, conceived and launched the annual BGTW Young Travel Writer Competition and has written several travel guidebooks. As mum to twin girls, age 4, she also has a strong interest and insight into family travel. Find her at Connected Copy.

Janyne Moore

Janyne Moore is the Co-Founder of Catablog, an online directory of Australian Bloggers and Influencers that tracks their social influence. Janyne is also a PR consultant who trains businesses on how to attain exposure in the media after 15 years as a trained journalist and Executive Producer in radio.

Mary Moore Mason

I am the immediate past chairman of the British Guild of Travel Writers, the founding and continuing editor of the UK’s Essentially America magazine and the winner of a number of travel writing awards in the USA and UK.

Laura Motta

Laura Motta had lived in NYC for five years when she quit her life and moved to Paris. While she was in Europe, she cultivated a taste for macarons, got sunburned on many French and Italian beaches, and became obsessed with traveling artfully – and frugally. Before coming to ShermansTravel, she worked as an editor at Everyday Health and iVillage. She hails from Massachusetts. www.shermanstravel.com

Neil Murray

Neil Murray, a former Travel Editor of the London Daily Mirror, writes frequently for the Scottish Sunday Mail newspaper and Essentially America magazine as well as, occasionally, for Group Leisure and Selling Travel magazines. In 2008, he was the first winner of the prestigious Travel Industry Association Discover America Travel Writer Award for the best US Travel Destination article, The March of the Murals, in Essentially America, for which he compiles a regular travel news column. He has also edited several travel guides – including the Great Lakes and California – for Phoenix International Publishing, Neil is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers.

Kayte Nunn

Kayte Nunn is an author, freelance book and magazine editor and features writer with more than 20 years’ publishing experience and is the former editor of Gourmet Traveller WINE magazine. She is the author of Rose’s Vintage (Black Inc Books, 2016).

Kate O’Brien

After18 years living and working in Asia, Kate returned to Ireland in 2013. She has enjoyed many years in the health, beauty and spa industries in London, Dublin, Singapore and Hong Kong and has become an established writer on lifestyle and spa culture. She is a founding judge of the prestigious annual Asia Spa awards. Kate is a qualified nutritionist and holds a diploma in cosmetic science from the Society of Chemical Scientists (UK). Kate writes for Asia Spa magazine, the Gloss and Image magazine (both in Ireland). She is the author of seven books, with her latest Your Middle Years: Love them. Live them. Own them being an Irish bestseller.

Alan Orbell

Alan Orbell’s travel writing career began on the now defunct Travel Agency Magazine published by Canadian company Maclean-Hunter.  He was appointed editor of St James Press’s Travel Bulletin in 1977 and in the 1980s purchased the magazine from the company when it was taken over by Reed International. After a brief period as a freelance he was appointed launch editor of new magazine Selling Long Haul – later Selling Travel – in 1989 and subsequently became publisher and then part-owner of the publishing company, BMI Publishing.  After selling the company in 1995 Alan remained with BMI Publishing as publisher/managing editor until April 2015 after which he continued to write on a freelance basis.

Grant Roff

Grant Roff is an academic and editor with over 40 years’ experience in a variety of communication industries. He has a BA (English and History) from Melbourne University and an MA (Communications) from Monash University.

He taught communication studies at RMIT University for 14 years and his editing credentials include eight years as editor of Royalauto and 20 years as a contributor and full-time editor of magazines for publishing groups including ACP and Bauer Media.

He ran creative writing workshops for Lonely Planet authors and has taught writing at university level in Australia, India, Vietnam and Singapore.

Lena Kilborne

Lena is a PR specialist, with over six years’ industry experience. During her time in the industry Lena has worked on a range of consumer, tech and travel brands, including Havaianas, TripAdvisor, LG Electronics, Tourism Australia, MILO, Carnival Cruise Lines, Activision and InterContinental Hotels Group.

Now as an Account Director at Bite Communications, Lena develops and executes campaigns for traditional PR and social media programs for her clients in the primary produce, health and lifestyle space, with clients including Australian Pineapples, Australian Papaya and Papaw and Australian Custard Apples.

Jock Serong

Jock Serong has worked as a criminal lawyer and was the founding editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. He has published three novels and writes extensively for the surfing media and in The Guardian and elsewhere. His current novel is On the Java Ridge.

Megan Singleton, Blogger at Large

Megan Singleton (@bloggeratlarge) is an Auckland based award-winning travel writer and blogger. She founded one of New Zealand’s largest travel and lifestyle blogs, Blogger at Large in 2009 after beginning her blogging career in 2006 for a nationwide travel agency where she cut her teeth blogging twice a day, five days a week for three years.

Megan’s travel writing career started in 2000 and her work is published around the world on websites, magazines and newspapers. She is also a weekly travel correspondent on two radio stations in New Zealand.

Amanda Statham

Following a BA Hons degree in Politics from Newcastle University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism from De Montford University, Amanda has enjoyed a successful career. Amanda is Travel Editor of Cosmopolitan and www.cosmopolitan.co.uk and was travel editor of You and Your Wedding magazine for eight years. She writes for national newspapers, magazines and guidebooks and has also presented films and university lectures on travel writing.

Ben Stubbs

Ben Stubbs is a lecturer at the University of South Australia. He has a PhD in travel writing. Ben has written numerous feature articles, essays and guidebooks for publications in Australia and overseas. His first book explored the ‘New Australia’ socialist utopian colony in the Paraguayan jungle. Ticket to Paradise: A Journey to Discover the Australian Colony in Paraguay Among Nazis, Mennonites and Japanese Beekeepers was published by HarperCollins in 2012. His next book, After Dark: A Nocturnal Exploration of Madrid (2016) begins from the premise of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who once wrote that we are blind half our lives because of what we miss during the night. Ben was drawn to explore the Spanish capital at night like the flâneurs of the past. He set out when the sun went down to explore this often-maligned city and to experience Madrid as a trasnochador—one who lives After Dark.

Richard Tulloch

Richard Tulloch began to travel extensively through his work as a writer of plays, books and television for young people, most famously writing The original Bananas in Pyjamas and recent plays adapted from The 13-Storey Treehouse series. He now divides his time between bases in Sydney and Amsterdam. Since 2009 he has been a regular contributor to Fairfax Media, particularly specialising in active travel stories.

Annabelle White

Annabelle White is a New Zealand Food and travel media personality who has and does appear on Tv/ nationwide radio, magazines and newspapers. Her web site is www.annabellewhite.com.

The author of 11 cookbooks and former food editor for NZ House & Garden and NZ Womens’ Weekly and the food columnist for the Sunday Star-Times for over 23 years – this former history teacher followed her love of communicating food and travel into a busy full time job. She has an MA Hons first class in history and geography and a few years ago was awarded a distinguished alumni award from the University of Waikato.

Suzy Yates

Suzy Yates has an impressive career in many forms of media. Suzy’s media career began at just eighteen years of age, when she landed her first job presenting music programs on radio station 2GN in Goulburn. She went on to work in radio advertising sales at Sydney’s 2UE where she also presented a weekend talkback show. Suzy then started her own PR company – Bay Street Mediaworks which she ran successfully for many years and had many travel clients. She has nursed many an injured possum through her volunteer work for WIRES, is a qualified real estate agent, runs the odd endurance event and is back in the field she loves – radio – working as a producer for Tim Webster and doing many fill in shifts behind the microphone herself.

Ruth Zukerman

Ruth Zukerman is a leading tourism and hospitality professional with a successful career spanning more than twenty five years in Australia, USA and Asia. Well respected in the areas of public relations, marketing, business development, communications and crisis management Ruth has worked with a range of high-end global brands including Four Seasons*Regent Hotels, Conrad and Intercontinental Hotels and Hyatt Corporation in the USA. With a passion for hospitality her vast experience has included Regent International Hotels based in Australia responsible for global sales, marketing and public relations. She spent 10 years with the Conrad Bali, opening the resort as Director of Sales & Marketing and six years in the role of Director of Public Relations during the time when incidents such as terrorism greatly affected business to Bali. Ruth was part of a small team responsible for restoring tourism from Australia by means of PR campaigns and crisis management to expand develop and promote tourism to Bali.