The red carpet was rolled out at the World Ski Awards in the legendary winter sports destination of Kitzbühel, Austria. The ceremony took place on 16 November within the glamorous setting of the A-ROSA Hotel & Resort. The awards are the first ever global initiative to celebrate and reward excellence in the ski hospitality industry.
Bongkil Ko, Deputy Director of the Korea Tourism Organisation (London office), and I had the honour of picking-up the awards for South Korea’s Best Ski Resort, which went to YongPyong, and South Korea’s Best Ski Hotel whose recipient was Alpensia Pyeongchang Resort.
The World Ski Awards Gala Ceremony was the perfect platform to remind attendees that Korea will host the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and network with the global ski travel community. Guests came from all over the world including Australia and South America for this inaugural event that will surely become an annual fixture within the tourism industry calendar.
World Ski Awards is the sister organisation of World Travel Awards, which is heralded as ‘the Oscars of the travel industry’ and who honoured Korea last year as Asia’s Leading Sports Tourism Destination 2012. So to accept these further awards in 2013 is another clear example of the diversity of Korea’s tourism offering to the global traveller.
Just shy of a million votes were submitted by professionals working in the ski industry, senior executives, travel buyers, tour operators, agents and media and by ski tourism consumers to select their favourite ski resorts, hotels and chalets from the published shortlist of finalists from the top 20 ski nations.
A chauffeured Audi Q7 (Audi were one of several key sponsors to the event) whisked us from Munich Airport having arrived on one of the many EasyJet services serving the Bavarian capital; from there, it was less than a 90-minute drive to arrive in Kitzbühel, making the location a star attraction of the awards and begging the question as to whether a resort in Gangwon-do might also host the ceremony as we march closer to PyeongChang 2018.
On our return journey home from London Gatwick Airport to Victoria Station, on my late night saviour The Gatwick Express, serendipitously, I met a Korean tourist who beamed with pride when I told him Korea had won two prizes at the World Ski Awards. He said, unprompted, that this ceremony should land in Korea before the 2018 Winter Olympics…..to which I had to agree!
Ramy Salameh, KTO London.
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