SimpliFlying wins the 2011 Gold Magellan Award for being the Best Online Travel Blog

It gives me great pleasure to share with you that SimpliFlying has been awarded the Gold medal in the 2011 Magellan Awards in the Online Travel Services |Blog category! These annual awards are organized by Travel Weekly, the travel industry’s most influential national trade publication.

This is our third major award in our 2.5 years of existence – we were among the Top 2 aviation blogs on the FlightGlobal Webbies in 2010 and won the Global Brand Leadership Award in 2009.

The numbers speak for themselves

In August 2011, we hit a record-breaking 75,000 unique visitors mark. While it may not sound like a lot compared to mainstream sites like Mashable, given our niche focus on aviation marketing, we think it’s worthy of a mention. Our Youtube channel now has over 800,000 views, presentations on Slideshare have been viewed over 150,000 times and we’re breaching the 8000 mark for our Twitter followers. So SimpliFlying has been Simply Flying of late 🙂

Why winning the Gold in Magellan Awards is a BIG deal…

The Magellan Awards is the premier awards program honoring the best in the travel industry, from design to marketing to services. The 2011 Magellan Awards received entries from top travel organizations and professionals worldwide and were judged by a panel of prominent travel industry professionals.

These are judged and overseen by a one-of-a-kind panel of top travel professionals representing the best names and most accomplished leaders from the industry. In determining winners, entries do not compete with one another, instead they are judged against a standard of excellence based on the long experience of Travel Weekly. To uphold this high standard of excellence, a category may have multiple winners, or may have no winners at all.

“This year’s Magellan Award winners have once again impressed the judges with their creativity and sense of style,” said Arnie Weissmann, editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly. He added, “The recipients of the Magellans truly represent the best of the industry, and their accomplishments are inspiring.”

All winners are featured in a special issue of Travel Weekly in September that will feature a special section dedicated to this year’s winners. Winners will also receive a custom produced statuette made by the same company that produces the Oscar® and Emmy® awards (we’re looking forward to that!)

It wouldn’t have been possible without YOU!

I must mention that this award is true testimony for the importance of connecting with the customer authentically, often through social media, for airlines and airports – all of whom SimpliFlying works actively with globally. And there have been a number of individuals who have been instrumental in bringing SimpliFlying where it is today.

Since this award is honoring the blog itself and its content – I have to begin with Shubhodeep Pal (@diaporesis) who is the Senior Innovation Officer at SimpliFlying and has been leading Product Development, Marketing and Business Development since December 2010 from our  headquarters in Singapore.

Among the successful initiatives spearheaded by him are the SimpliFlying Top 10 case-packs which have received more than 100,000 views till date. He has been the backbone of the website all of last year and we probably wouldn’t be producing so much thought leadership assets without his leadership. Thank you – Shubhodeep 🙂

Special thanks to Robert Cook, Craig Stark, Steven Klimek, Rachel Levy and Kal Joffres have been instrumental in making SimpliFlying the McKinsey of the airline marketing world.

My Board has been highly supportive – from Patrick Murphy meeting me for dinner in Geneva to Don Schenk and Chris Brogan, who are always sharing nuggets of invaluable advice. Robin Speculand meets me anywhere we cross paths around the world and his mentorship has been priceless. These Board of Advisors are a blessing to me.

Special thanks also to my Twitter followers, LinkedIn group members and Facebook friends, who’re always making me think, with their 140chars comments, “likes” and thoughts on my discussion threads. I can’t imagine the journey that has been without these individuals who have been ardent supporters, especially @runwaygirl, @austinKVS, @jenn_seeley, @vivekmayasandra @sven_solterbeck @avaltat @kevinlukemay @hharteveldt @AirlineReporter @airlinetrends @obsalah and so many more!

Lastly and most importantly, our clients – who’ve worked with us to push the boundaries in this field. LAN Airlines, Jet Airways, Bombardier, Navitaire, airBaltic, Airbus, SpiceJet, Estonian Air, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airports, Halifax International and more…

I bet I’ve missed some folks out, but drop me a Tweet or an email, and I’ll make up for it. Promise. Thanks again everyone.

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