UK. BAA Retail and Expedia, the UK’s leading on-line travel service, have launched a new Book Awards scheme to celebrate the importance of books to those who travel.
The scheme aims to encourage more people to pack a book when flying and to provide guidance for those seeking Summer reading matter.
The awards are being run with the support of airport book retailers – WH Smith, Borders and Books Etc. The booksellers and their airport staff have selected the shortlists of five books in four categories, fiction, non-fiction, kids and biography. Travellers can vote for their best Summer read and will get the chance to win an Expedia Holiday worth £2,000.
The partnership combines the expertise of the leaders in travel retail and online travel to celebrate the best in popular literature and bring it to an audience of holiday-makers that will pass through BAA airports this summer.
The retailers will be supporting the awards with in store point of sale displays, stickers on books and voting boxes. Passengers will be able to vote for their favourite holiday read on the BAA website, www.baa.com/bookawards, via SMS and in store at WHSmith, World News and Books Etc.
Brian Woodhead, Head of Category – Technology & Entertainment commented: “This category is such a massive growth area for BAA Retail and last year over seven million books were sold through BAA Airports. We wanted to celebrate this achievement with these awards.
“The partnership between Expedia and BAA combines the best in travel with the best in travel retail. The inclusion of our bookstore partners means we are uniquely able to create awards that have been selected by the people most important to us; the extremely knowledgeable store staff that sell the books and the all-important customers who read them.”
Elyas Chowdhury, Marketing Director at Expedia.co.uk said: “We are pleased to be partnering with BAA to celebrate such an important element of the consumer holiday experience – reading books. Expedia.co.uk provides customers with the opportunity to tailor-make their perfect holiday and make a saving by choosing their preferred flights, hotel and car hire to package together. Now they will also be able to identify their perfect holiday read.”
The winners will be presented with their awards at a ceremony in October.
NOTE: This story is included in The Moodie Report.com’s ‘News and Books’ section which includes regular information – and a growing archive – on this key and growing category in travel retail worldwide.
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