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Copyright Elliott Publishing. All rights reserved. For more information, call (305) 453-4781 or send e-mail to us.

Unpublished Business
November 16, 2001

Sometimes what doesn't get published is as important as what does.

Case-in-point: an expose on travel awards that I've been researching for the last year. After countless phone calls, many hours of researching and writing, and more than a few arguments with my editors, the story now appears to be dead.

But every good story deserves a burial. I wouldn't think of letting this one go without a few words.

Part of me is disappointed that you'll never get to read what I learned about travel awards. For example, I discovered that most of the honors given to hotels, airlines, cruise lines and car rental agencies range from flawed to fraudulent. I also found out that travel industry awards are often tainted by commercial interests, statistical irregularities, or the biases of an elite group of editors.

And I named names.

  • There was a dissection of the most prestigious industry award given by Conde Nast Traveler magazine, which claimed to have a response rate for its reader survey more than ten times higher than the industry average. There was the former Conde Nast editor who admitted that award nominations depend on "publicists pushing it."

  • There was a memorable exchange with a Travel + Leisure editor, who, when asked how many people respond to the magazine's surveys, told me, "I can tell you that it's at least tens of thousands, but the actual number is proprietary." When I asked why it was proprietary, I was told, "That's proprietary, too."

  • There was a Zagat's spokeswoman who confessed that her company allowed a small group of editors to nominate the candidates for its Top US Hotels, Resorts & Spas publication, a 268-page booklet that rates 1,500 hotels. What if the editors overlooked a deserving hotel? Well, I was told, there's a space for write-in candidates on the survey.

  • There was Andrew Harper who said that he counted the ballots for his newsletter's reader surveys himself over several days without the help of an outside auditor. And there was the American Automobile Association, which sends out an army of inspectors who adhere to a rigid, and often inflexible, set of rating criteria for its awards.

  • But perhaps the harshest criticism was reserved for the World Travel Awards, an industry accolade with a shady reputation and an abundance of detractors. As one source close to the awards told me, "The winners were pre-determined. They never bothered to explain their methodology. They never counted a vote." There were also allegations, difficult to prove, that the all-inclusive hotel chain Sandals played a significant part in supporting the awards.
I'd like to think that everything I reported was true, and for about eight months, I'm certain that it was. But the first magazine that commissioned the story postponed the publication date several times for reasons that probably had more to do with available editorial pages than the quality of the article. As the end of the year approached, the publication decided that a travel expose didn't make a good fit for the times. It killed the feature.

Within a few days, another large consumer publication snatched up the rights to the article. But by then it was too late. The fact-checkers began calling my sources and many of the people interviewed for the story recanted. Some, no doubt, withdrew their quotes for political reasons. Others couldn't be reached because they had left their jobs. But most did simply because the facts had changed.

My editors suggested that my original investigation - and the prospect of an expose in a major magazine - had compelled many of these awards to change their ways. Which is exactly what we had wanted to achieve in the first place. We agreed to let this story go.

Are there still dubious awards out there? Of course. But that's another story.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.