Wriuter awards

MARCH 2020 PAGE 33 TRAVEL WRITER AWARDS 2020

Isabel Conway

Gerry O’Hare young jounralist award winer Ste phen Evans of the Herald with Eoghan Corry and category sponsor Maria Golpe of Camino Ways,

Oisin Feeney represnting Janet Newenham Digital Media award winner with Eoghan Corry and category sponsor Paul Hackett of Clickandgo,

Eoghan Corry, Broadcast winner Mary Fanning of RTE Nationwide and category sponsor Charlotte Brenner. of TUI,

Eoghan Corry, Pol O Conghaile of the Irish Independent and category sponsor Helen Brady of Failte Ireland,

Eoghan Corry, Northern Ireland winner Jamie Ball and category sponsor Fiona Cunningham of TourismNI,

is writer of year

Isabel Conway was presented with the Travel Extra Journalist of the Year Award at a ceremony held to coincide with the annual Holiday World Show.

Nine other winners, each for different travel categories, were announced at an awards dinner in Thomas Prior House, Ballsbridge which was attended by the cream of Irish travel and tourism writers and broadcasters.

The event was sponsored by the Spanish Tourism Office and Lanzarote Tourist Board. The award winners were chosen by a distinguished panel of senior Irish journalists.

This year saw a huge increase in the number of submissions from previous years, displaying the creativity and continuing innovation of travel and tourism journalism in Ireland.

The Gerry O’Hare Best Newcomer Journalist - sponsored by CaminoWays.com: Stephen Evans Best Digital Media - sponsored by ClickandGo:

Janet Newenham Best Broadcasting - sponsored by TUI:

RTÉ Nationwide – Mary Fan

ning and Mary Kennedy

Best Northern Ireland - sponsored by Tourism Northern Ireland: Jamie Ball Home market (Ireland) story - sponsored by Fáilte Ireland: Pól O Conghaile Best Adventure - sponsored by UWalk.ie & Salzburgerland State Board of Tourism: Yvonne Gordon Best Skiing - sponsored by Topflight & Gastein Tourist Board Austria:

Catherine Murphy Best Short Haul - sponsored by Sunway: Pól O Conghaile Best Long Haul - sponsored by Cassidy Travel: Isabel Conway Previous winners of the overall award were: 1986 Isabel Conway, 2002 Cleo Murphy, 2004-5 Pól Ó Conghaile, 2006 Kathryn Thomas, 2007 Muriel Bolger, 2008 Philip Nolan, 2009 Pól Ó Conghaile, 2010 Mark Evans, 2011 Philip Nolan 2012 Isabel Conway 2013 Sue Morris, 2014- 15 Pól Ó Conghaile, 2016 Isabel Conway, 2017 Yvonne Gordon, 2018 Mal Rogers, 2019 Pol O Conghaile, 2020 Isabel Conway Travel wirter of the year Isabel Conway with Eoghan Corry, editor of Travel Extra and category sponsors Angel Vazquez of Lanzarote Tourism and Ruben Lopez Director of the Spanish Tourist Board office in Dublin,

Category sponsor Yvonne Rosenstatter of Tourism Salzburg. Pol O Conghaile representing adventure winner Yvonne Gordon,

Eoghan Corry, ski winner Catherine Murphyand category sponsor Michelle Anderson of Topflight,

Eoghan Corry, long haul category winner Isabel Conway travel writer and category sponsor John Spollen of Cassidy Travel President of the ITAA,

Winners of the Travel Extra Writer Awards Jamie Ball, Stephen Evans, Pol O Conghaile, Oisin feeney representing Janet Newenham, Eoghan Corry editor of Travel Extra, Ruben Lopez Director of the Spanish Tourist Board office in Dublin (front row) isabel Conway overall winnner, mary fanning and Catherine Murphy,

Just back from: CELEBRITY APEX

Ship tour with the CEO as a guide

Stateroom

The race to Apex Pool deck on Celebrity Aprx, set to launch in April

Aileen O’Reilly and Richard Fain

and April launch

Welcome aboard C e l e b r i t y Apex, Celebrity Cruise’s second state of the art Edge class billion dollar ship .designed entirely in 3D.

She will be completed on March 2nd and will also be Celebrity’s first

ship to be launched in the UK in 10 years.

With a tonnage of 129,500 she supports a crew of 1,319 from 69 countries and accommodates 2,910 guests in her 1,467 staterooms.

Reshma Sauhani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, the international nonprofit organisation working to close the gender gap in technology, is the newly crowned Godmother of Apex.

Travel Extra’s Aileen C. O’Reilly was invited to don her hard hat and join the world’s travel media for a sneak peek at Apex before she leaves her current home in the Chantiers de L’Atlantique shipyard in Nantes, France where an army of 9,000 has built her over the past 18 months.

Celebrity CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo , Aileen O’Reilly

The bridge

MARCH 2020 PAGE 35 SPONSORED PROFILE: LANZAROTE

Lanzarote gathered a soufflé of chefs for their annual food tourism conference, at which Ruben Lopez of the Spanish Tourist Board in Dublin and Travel Extra both had a speaking (not a cooking) part.

The island showcased its fish to dish and farm to fork product to delegates after they had discussed El turismo gastronómico sostenible thoroughly, drawing up examples from all over the world and comparing the merits of ox and workhorse meat (tasty but expensive).

Most notably the Restaurante Isla de Lobos in the hotel Princesa Yaiza hosted the delegates, food writers from major publications throughout Europe, and showcased Finca de Uga, their nearby farm where happy pigs and hens are readied for whatever happens next in the food chain.

Lanzarote’s climate and isolation makes it an ideal producer of unique foods, some of them not available elsewhere.

The star of the show was Gambas La Santa, prawn of La Santa, as it is known in Lanzarote, or soldier shrimp, as it is known in the rest of the world (plesionika edwardsii).

It is, we were told a very abundant crustacean in the Canarian bottoms at depths that range between 50 and 650 meters, with the largest populations between 120 and 350 meters,, lovingly tended and harvested by the Olivero family. Delegates were treated to, as on put it, “our own body weight in cheese.” Ángel Vázquez Minister for Tourism Lanzarote told the delegates that Lanzarote’s famed wintersun product was being augmented by a diverse food product that was only now being appreciated by visitors. Lanzarote is a favourite with Irish visitors, with 285.716 visitors in 2019. If it were a country, it would be Ireland’s seventh most popular destination, ahead of Germany. Xavier Agulló, Benjamín Lana, Carlos Maribona and Rubén López Pulido (Director of the Spanish Tourism Office in Dublin) speaking at a Food Tourism conference in Teguise, Lanzarote

Gambas la santa, Only the the Olivero family have the rights to fish them Iván Dominguez chef at Disfrutar in La Corun