How Traverse Award Winners are Determined

The following is a summary of the process through which Traverse Award recipients are selected.

The KTIA Management team selects six volunteer judges who are highly respected professionals within the tourism industry with extensive industry experience. Each judge is located outside of Kentucky to maintain full objectivity. Their names are not disclosed, nor do they disclose that they are Traverse judges. That confidentiality allows them to be 100% objective even if they happen to know organizations or individuals who have submitted entries.

Following the submission deadline, judges are sent information and guidance about the process along with entry forms, supporting collateral, summary of entries forms and a score sheet. Throughout the judging window, the KTIA management team is available to answer questions for judges.

The entries, as sent to the judges, are organized by the 11 categories and within the categories, they are organized by division.

Judges do not arrive at their scores by comparing entries to each other. In other words, as they review entries, they are not attempting to identify the best entry, second best, etc. (Ranking entries comes later in the process). Instead, within the category and division groupings, the judges evaluate and score each entry on its individual merits in relation to the judging criteria.

This is comparable to a teacher evaluating students' work on an essay assignment, with the teacher telling the students the key points – criteria – the essays need to address. In the scoring process, the teacher doesn’t evaluate each essay in comparison to the others, but rather on the extent to which and quality with which each essay addressed the key points.

The criteria for judging entries are as follows with scoring based on up to 25 points for each criterion for a total of 100 points possible:

CONCEPT: What is the underlying concept and what are the goals and objectives it is intended to achieve? (Submitters will need to explain the concept and goals of the project.)
CREATIVITY: How contextually and visually creative and innovative was the project? What distinguishes the entry and makes it unique? (Submitters will need to describe the project in creative terms regarding project design, development, implementation and as applicable, include elements of originality, innovation, graphic creativity.)
RESULTS/IMPACT: Was the project successful? What was the impact of the project, particularly in relation to the goal(s)? (Submitters will need to describe as specifically as possible what the project achieved and include quantified results to the extent possible. If the project does not have quantifiable results, be sure to include what impact was derived.)
OVERALL PROJECT IMPRESSION: Judge’s overall assessment of the project based on the combination of concept, creativity and results/impact.

By the pre-determined deadline, judges submit their scores to the management team. The judges' scores are then averaged for each entry and the averages for all entries are ranked from highest to lowest.

From the total list of ranked scores, Gold Awards are received by the top 10% highest scores, Silver Award are the next highest 20% and Bronze are the next 20%. That means that 50% of entries receive an award and that 50% do not.

To continue with the essay analogy, this is the same as grading on a curve where after the teacher gives each essay a numerical score. The scores are ranked and wherever each essay is within the ranking determines its letter grade.

Note that the percentages shown above are targets rather than absolutes because it is not unusual for there to be multiple entries that receive the same average score, and sometimes these "ties" can include a relatively large number of entries. The most reasonable break point, i.e., as close as practical to the target percentage among groups of ties, is determined, which can result in the stated percentages not being exactly met. There is never a case where ties are split in which, for example, some entries receive a Gold and others a Silver, even though their averaged judges' scores were the same.