Geotourist won the Gold award for its audio tour of GLBT History of Denver. The award was presented by WTM, World Travel Market, at a ceremony held on Tuesday, 6 November 2018, at London’s Tobacco Dock.
The International Travel & Tourism Awards shine a spotlight on businesses that make valuable contributions to the global travel industry. Winners of the awards deliver great ideas and see their work celebrated as a source of best practice for peers to be inspired from, and to learn from. The Best in LGBT Travel award is given to organizations that demonstrate outstanding initiative to appeal to, and meet the needs of, LGBT travelers.
The audio tour hosted on the Geotourist app was developed for older LGBT Americans by AARP Colorado, in collaboration with Denver Walking Tours and the GLBT Community Center of Colorado. The tour celebrates the history of the LGBT community, telling the stories of its struggle for equality through activism and decades-long hard work in building social, political and religious ties to eventually assimilate into the wider community. The audio tour tells these stories with a walk through historic sites and landmarks across Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
The tour reflects AARP values, “empowering people to choose how they live as they age”, and by offering true independent travel. Bringing diverse stories onto a technology platform that can be accessed by all, this project allows for this history to be preserved and retold for generations to come.
Shaon Talukder, CEO, Geotourist commented: “For Geotourist, being recognized by industry peers is a wonderful achievement towards our mission of building an inclusive and accessible audio-map of the world, where we share human stories from communities of all backgrounds to help us understand and connect with each other.”
Users can access AARP Colorado’s GLBT history tour on the Geotourist app available for free download on iTunes and Google Play app stores. The GPS-led app will guide users from site-to-site, automatically playing the stories of each site at users’ own pace and time.
The announcement of winners can be viewed on the WTM website.