The tourism and hospitality industries have been through a lot this year. The situation is ongoing, and there is understandably a lot of worry. While we acknowledge the seriousness of the current state of affairs, we think the world needs more hope and inspiration right now.

To that end, we have launched a shorter, special edition of our annual FoodTrekking Awards competition, specifically to recognize businesses and destinations that have made innovative and successful pivots to their food or beverage tourism business model due to the pandemic. For example, a restaurant may have found a clever way to keep all staff on the payroll until business picks up. Or a tourism office may have launched an unexpected marketing campaign for local residents with fantastic results. These are the types of stories we want to hear about, and they would make great awards applications.

“While we put our main FoodTrekking Awards categories on hold until 2021, we have just introduced two new, timely categories to recognize destinations and businesses in our food and beverage tourism industry that are finding truly innovative ways to cope,” said WFTA Executive Director Erik Wolf. “Our intent with this Special Edition of our Awards program is to bring hope and inspiration to the world’s food, beverage, hospitality and tourism industries.” Winners will be announced on November 30, 2020.

The abbreviated FoodTrekking Awards competition is open now through October 31. A wide variety of business types that are eligible to apply include culinary tour operators; culinary tourist guides; culinary travel agencies; cooking classes; restaurants, cafes and bars; tasting rooms; wineries and breweries; culinary lodging properties; culinary retail stores; culinary travel media; and all types of destination marketing organizations. Businesses and destinations can learn more and apply here.