Up to the 10th Tourism Awards, the nomination process was one of self-nomination, whereby the organisations themselves sent in write-ups and presentation packages to qualify for the respective awards. For the individual categories, the companies and organisations would nominate their own staff, verifying their competence for the award.

From the 11th Tourism Awards onwards, a major revamp and review of the awards resulted in the public nomination process being introduced to replace the old system of self-nomination.

Nomination forms are produced and distributed at strategic locations (Singapore Visitors’ Centres, restaurants, hotels, attractions, shopping centres and retail outlets) for the public and tourists to nominate the best of the tourism industry.

After the nominations are collated and processed, the judging process commences.

Judging Process

To ensure that the judging process is fair and credible, judging panels comprising representatives from the tourism industry as well as from other private and public sectors judge each of the categories. The identity of the judges is kept confidential.

Nominees are presented to the judging panels for each category and nominees are short listed by assessing how well they meet the award criteria.

Organisation nominees are selected for further consideration via a site visit. The judges make mystery visits to the selected sites to re-assess the nominees. For the Tourism Host nominees, they are selected for further consideration via mystery site visits to the nominees at their workplace to assess the experience provided. The judging panel may also conduct personal interviews with the individual nominees to assess their capabilities.

The judging panels then confer to shortlist the finalists and pick the winners for their respective categories. The names of the finalists and winners are kept confidential until the day of the awards presentation.