The wave of digital transformation has swept most verticals and changed the competitive landscape especially in the travel industry. what impact digital transformation will have on the travel industry in the next 20 years.

Let's take a look at a set of forecasts from the World Tourism Organization.
Up to US$305 billion value created for the industry by enhancing profitability;
Value transfer from traditional enterprises to newcomers, to the tune of $100 billion;
$700 billion worth of benefits generated for users and businesses by increasing security, and generating time and money saving.

Travel companies at the cutting edge are leveraging digital technologies to develop at an unprecedented rate. What does this mean for others in the industry?

The Digital Travel Awards program aims to recognize digital transformation pioneers who have demonstrated excellence in digital marketing, product innovation and new technology in the past year. The awards will mark the way forward for digital transformation, and industry practitioners can learn from high achievers to blaze their own innovation trails.

The Innovation Marketing Contest and Product Innovation Challenges held in conjunction with the Travel Daily Conference have attracted many outstanding entries in the past. The competition framework has been refined to ensure a more effective selection and evaluation process.

Submission process optimized
An Entry Guide will be published listing award categories and the entry submission process. It will provide a step-by-step guide to encourage participation.

Judging mechanism refined
Each award category will have a judging panel of several experts from the digital marketing and product innovation fields. They will evaluate and identify inspiring outstanding submissions objectively. The judging panel will have wide and fair representation on the judging panel, comprising senior executives from different segments in the travel industry, investors of innovative tourism practices and other industry experts with extensive experience and insight related to the awards. The judges are meticulously selected by the event’s organizing committee to ensure they are familiar with the evaluation criteria.

Evaluation criteria strengthened
A training program will be offered for judges to ensure consistency in judging. Judges will get a full briefing on the award program’s mission, significance, design, evaluation criteria and models to help them make informed decisions. Impartial third parties will be invited to monitor voting accuracy in the preliminary rounds and the finals to ensure the integrity of the awards program.

Digital Travel Awards will present two award categories: Innovative Marketing Award and Product Innovation Award. Each category will feature Nomination Awards and a Gold Award. The Nomination Awards will be awarded to 20% of the entries, and awardees will present their cases and answer judges’ questions in a live session at the Travel Daily Conference 2019 on August 27. The judges will select a winner from each category as the Gold Award winner. The Digital Travel Awards Presentation Ceremony will be held during the gala dinner of the Travel Daily Conference on August 28.

Award recognition with public credibility
The organizer has built a professional and impartial evaluation system and invited prestigious judges to ensure the value of Digital Travel Award. The single Gold Award winner selected will represent a model leading industry trends and innovative practice.

High-Level Industry Communication
The Digital Travel Awards is establishing a broad platform of communication beyond just an award. The winner as well as the shortlisted entries will receive advices from professional judges and also be invited to meet with distinguished guests at the TravelDaily Conference and Digital Travel Award Dinner Ceremony on August 28.

In-depth Brand Communication
Shortlisted entries will be announced on TravelDaily’s website, Wechat official account and other channels from August 5 to August 25, 2019. Excellent entries and Gold Award winner will be mentioned in the Digital Travel Award Trend Report which will be released on Dinner Ceremony. TravelDaily will report on entry selection, award ceremony, trend report release with media partners.

We will invite industrial leaders who have made special contributions to the digital transformation or pointed out the direction of development in travel industry. To ensure fair and diversified evaluation, the organizer will launch an openly judge recruitment system.

Preliminary assessment and qualifying rounds. To ensure fair and objective evaluation, the organizing committee and impartial third parties will verify the scores in each round of evaluation.Preliminary Round entries will be subject to online judging. Shortlisted entries will be presented live on stage to the judging panel during the Travel Daily Conference 2019 on August 27.Winners will be determined by judges in a closed-door discussion on the evening of August 27. The judges will make their decisions based on the evaluation criteria and models after in-depth discussions of the live presentations. A Gold Award winner will be named for each category and the winners list will be sealed and kept by the third party notary. The results will be announced at the Travel Daily Conference Dinner on August 28.

A 5-point scoring system will be applied to all award categories. In both the preliminary and final rounds, the highest and the lowest score of each entry will be disregarded, and the average of the remaining scores will be calculated. The total score of each entry is the sum of the score for each criterion multiplied by the weighting of the criterion in the overall evaluation scheme.

Copyright
Entries must be an original work of the company (or group) that makes the submission, and must not be involved in any intellectual property dispute. The organizing committee is not responsible for any copyright or intellectual property dispute related to any entry. The judging panel of the award program will be concerned with the quality of the submitted work and will not involve in any legal issue related to the work.

The organizing committee reserves the right to disqualify any work in the event of intellectual property disputes. If an awardee’s work is found to have intellectual property rights issues, the organizing committee reserves the right to rescind the award and recover any certificate and trophy related to the award.

The organizer reserves to right to claim compensations from any participant of the award program for any loss due to intellectual property rights dispute in the participant’s entry. Such loss may include but not limited to financial loss, reputation loss, legal fees, indemnity and verification fees. The Organizing Committee reserves the right to reject any work that is deemed offensive to any culture, ethnic groups or moral standards or not in compliance with the requirements of the competition. The organizer has the right to exhibit, publish, promote and store the entries.

Upon submitting an entry, participants agree to the terms and conditions as stated above. The Competition’s Organizing Committee has the right of final interpretation of the rules of the competition.

Data sources of entries
To ensure evaluation integrity, the Organizing Committee recommends that all entries must include accurate description of the sources of data, including:
Third-party data (name of third party is required)
The company's customer-related data, with customers’ expressed permission if applicable
The company's own data

When presenting sensitive data, participants are advised to provide indicative numbers, such as percentages or indexed figures, and avoid disclosing actual figures.

Promotion
All documentation submitted with the entry will automatically be retained as an asset of the Digital Travel Awards and will not be returned. Upon presenting the entry, you grant the Organizing Committee the consent to replicate, reproduce or display the documentation for educational or promotional purposes.