Our top tip for writing a winning tourism award submission

Feb 12

There’s nothing like the acknowledgement of a tourism award for a year of hard work! But writing a tourism award submission is such a big time commitment that you’ll want to maximise your chances of success.

The awards are designed to support business improvement via business planning, so if you don’t write annual business plans, you can find it hard to answer some of the questions and quantify your achievements for the judges.

Our biggest tip to set your business up for awards success is to write a simple annual business plan for your business’ development, marketing, and sustainability (including social sustainability).

If you haven't yet developed a plan for the coming year, we recommend you write one now – a plan will help your business grow in this year, and they’ll help your award submission too!

Free template

Download our free succinct business plan template - you should be able to easily fill it in in an hour or two to help plan for the coming year. It could be a great team-building activity to do with your team, and get everyone working together on growing the business.

This template is specifically designed to help you write a tourism award submission, so you'll thank yourself later when you are writing yours for the time savings.

HOWEVER: This year (2025) the awards submission has LOTS of changes, and the business plan in the link below is based on the previous awards format.

Download our free business plan template

Alternatively, download these more comprehensive business plan templates from Business.gov.au.

Business plan template

Sustainability plan template

Facebook post by Australian Tourism Industry Council announcing Spirits of the Red Sand as Gold winners

Our clients’ award-winning submissions

Tilma Group have been helping clients win state and national tourism awards for many years, including

Gold at the Australian Tourism Awards for Major Festivals and Events:
Darwin Festival (2023)
Gold at the Australian Tourism Awards for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Tourism: Spirits of the Red Sand (2022)

Strengthen your award submission

We can provide feedback on your draft submission to help you improve your chance of winning.

We apply our 15 years of experience in writing, reviewing, judging, and winning tourism awards to providing detailed advice and feedback on how to strengthen your submission.

In 2024 we helped clients win Gold in Ecotourism, Gold in a sustainability award, and two Golds for Events and Festivals (in two different states).

Reach out to Kushla at 0490 489 330 or kushla@tilmagroup.com.au if you would like help with your award submission.

Cristy Houghton

Cristy's unique career has taken her from country NSW to the city lights of Clarendon Street South Melbourne and back again. With an early career in radio as a copywriter and creative strategist, she is now a Jill of all trades as a graphic designer, website builder, blog writer, video editor, social media manager, marketing strategist and more.

In fact, give her any task and this chick will figure out how to do it! Go on, we dare you!

No, really, we DARE you!!

Cristy has won two Australian Commercial Radio Awards (ACRAs) for Best Ad and Best Sales Promotion, and even has an 'Employee of the Year' certificate with her name on it.

Cristy and her husband James have traveled extensively through Russia, China and South East Asia, and have two fur-babies, Sooty (cat) and Panda (puppy). Cristy loves drinking coffee, meeting people to drink coffee, coffee tasting and coffee flavoured cocktails. She also enjoys road trips, TED Talks and watching cat videos on youtube.

http://www.embarketing.com.au