Judging Criteria:

This category recognizes destinations that are best in class in culinary tourism development and promotion. To us, the best food or beverage destinations use food and drink as key motivators for travelers to choose your destination. Common motivators for culinary travelers can be the quality of the products offered, the authenticity of the experiences, the uniqueness of the experience, and how well the destination has been promoted as a food destinations across social media. Your destination needs to cater to the culinary traveler by offering unique and memorable food and drink experiences.

Judging Criteria:

This category recognizes businesses that go above and beyond to make food and beverage an unforgettable part of the lodging experience. Why is food or beverage important to highlight in a lodging experience? Lodging and accommodation providers have the unique opportunity to 'highlight' the local food culture. This is important because a visitor's experience with local food and drink will begin or end inside an accommodation business. When we say best food or beverage experience, we don't mean gourmet or innovative necessarily. We are looking for establishments that educate their visitors by bringing awareness to them about the amazing local culinary culture of food and drink. Local ingredients, cooking techniques, traditional dishware, local producers, artisanal producers, are all important factors to consider.

Judging Criteria:

This category recognizes those chefs or foodservice businesses using creativity and innovation to make local ingredients the star of their menu, while preserving and promoting the local culinary culture. The use of local ingredients is important on many levels, such as preserving local culture, driving local economic development and helping to protect our planet's unique biodiversity. These goals can be achieved in many different ways, although there just one sector of our industry has more potential to do so than any others : foodservice. Chefs and restaurant owners have the power to choose what they put on their menus, and the stories they tell around it.

Judging Criteria:

This category recognizes creativity and innovation in a destination marketing activity or campaign to attract visitors to a region/destination. The campaign can be international or domestic, a single promotional activity or a series of related promotions delivered by one organization. Food lovers often respond well to clever marketing, especially featuring plenty of food "porn". However, with the words "local" and "authentic" are being overused in marketing, and food- and drink- lovers are starting to ignore those, and even take them for granted (i.e. that they are required).