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Gourmet Traveller Travel Awards 2008 awards night

Watch video of the Travel Awards event.

When deciding on a venue for this year’s much-anticipated Australian Gourmet Traveller Travel Awards, the emphasis was very much on finding a sophisticated, hospitable location in an area of outstanding beauty. Very similar, in fact, to the prerequisites for this year’s batch of lucky award winners. So it was impossible to go past the consistently excellent Quay, where Peter Gilmore and his talented team kept a who’s who of the Australian travel industry sated with a gorgeous array of hors d’oeuvre – crostini with olive tapenade, mozzarella and tomato confit; a luxe chocolate and hazelnut ganache, among others – in the lead up to our awards, which were sponsored by Nespresso.

Against a backdrop of the Sydney Opera House and a shimmering harbour, our guests enjoyed fine wines such as Jacob’s Creek 2006 Steingarten Riesling as Getaway’s glamorous presenter Catriona Rowntree oversaw proceedings. Our speakers included Nespresso’s Australia general manager Renaud Tinel (guests gave the thumbs up to the extra-special Nespresso Martinis), as well as Joyce DiMascio, head of business events for Tourism Australia, who spoke to the assembled industry heads about the future of tourism and sustainability and the necessity to protect the environment and communities that host our international, Australian and business events visitors.

We’d love to thank our friends at Getaway, British Airways and Small Luxury Hotels of the World for their support. But the true stars of the show were, of course, our award winners – representative of the very best of the Australian tourism industry, as voted by our expert panel of judges and our readers. Congratulations to all who won. You can see the full list of our 2008 Travel Awards winners here.

PHOTOGRAPHY MICHELLE PIRIE AND TENY AGHAMALIAN

This article appeared in the July 2008 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller.