Announcing the winners of the Responsible Tourism Awards 2009

Virgin Holidays are proud to announce the winners of the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards 2009

Almost 600 unique organisations, individuals and destinations were nominated from all over the world for making a real difference to local communities and the environment.

The Responsible Tourism Awards are the most competitive and prestigious awards of their kind in the world and are a collaboration between online travel directory responsibletravel.com, who founded and organise the Awards, UK media partners The Daily Telegraph and Geographical Magazine, and World Travel Market, who host the Awards ceremony (read more about our Partners).

The panel of expert judges had a difficult job when it was time to choose the winners:

“Working our way through this year’s long lists, we were impressed by the willingness of so many organisations to take responsibility and to do what they can to help make better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit. Despite the economic difficulties being faced by the travel and tourism industry, responsible tourism continues to move ahead and I’m continually impressed as more is achieved by more people. As judges we are all very aware of the great work that is being done by so many and our decisions are often very difficult and sometimes long debated.” – Dr. Harold Goodwin, Director, International Centre for Responsible Tourism and Chair of Judges

The overall winner: Whale Watch Kaikoura, New Zealand

The judges declared Whale Watch Kaikoura, New Zealand the overall winner with the following statement.

“Rarely do we see a tourism initiative developed from the ground up by a local community to such a successful and grand scale – growing from modest beginnings to securing in a joint venture with Sea World on the Gold Coast of Australia to provide their whale watching.

Whale Watch Kaikoura provides consistently responsible whale watching tours with minimal impacts. The founding of the enterprise by four Maori families has demonstrated that the local Maori community can not only grow a considerable tourism business, but, more significantly, use that business to buy back their ancestral land for the benefit of the indigenous people and their cultural identity.”

For contact details for Whale Watch KaiKoura, New Zealand, and all of the winners from this years Responsible Tourism Awards, please check out Responsible Tourism Awards.com and make your next holiday, an eco-responsible one!