The 17th annual GITs: the travel awards no one wants to win

Retrieve your moth-nibbled dinner jacket from the darkest recess of the wardrobe and loosen your polyester cummerbund another notch… yes, it’s time to fall in for the 17^th annual Gongs In Travel, aka The GITs, the awards corporate travel bosses really don’t want adorning their office walls. Pour yourself a schooner of oesophagus-challenging British cooking sherry and let’s dive in.

Most Astounding Airline Contribution To Fighting Global Warming
JOINT-WINNER: SWISS, for Green Fares between Zurich and Geneva
SWISS hit on the brainwave of introducing, in its own words, “Green Fares” that offer “sustainable flying” between Zurich and Geneva, only 143 miles apart. Your ticket automatically includes “offsetting of CO2 emissions” through contributions to sustainable aviation fuel and climate protection projects. Just a thought, but might a fare for one of the 43 direct trains running each weekday in either direction between the cities be that tiniest bit greener?

JOINT-WINNER: Japan Airlines, for Any Wear, Anywhere
Polar bears on melting ice floes relax, JAL is here to help. In July the carrier launched a year-long fly-light trial for travellers wanting to make a “sustainable choice”.  Passengers can leave their own clothes at home (apart, presumably, from the ones they wear on board – although I do recall a plan once to launch flights for naturists) and avail themselves of rented apparel at their destination. By JAL’s own estimation, that’s 7.5kg in CO2 emissions saved by taking 10kg less luggage from Tokyo to New York – out of, according to emissions calculator provider Chooose, 696kg of CO2 per passenger flying in economy and 2.16 tonnes in business class. Decide for yourself what colour these clothes are washed in.

The Uncle Sam Golden Bullet For Most Alarming “Only in America” Travel Stat
WINNER: Transportation Security Administration
The TSA intercepted, wait for it, 6,542 firearms at airport security checkpoints in 2022, it was revealed in February this year. But that’s not the scariest figure: that honour belongs to the fact 88 per cent of them were loaded. The number of confiscations is set to hit a new high in 2023, and the percentage that were loaded has climbed above 90 per cent. It makes the salami I once smuggled through customs at London Gatwick seem pretty innocuous now.

The Hartley’s Glass Jar For Putting Jam On The Cohen Family Table in 2023
WINNER: European Union regulation
New Distribution Capability made much more of a comeback than I would have liked after a couple of years when I foolishly hoped I might never have to cover it again. But trying to explain complicated EU rules no one really understood, least of all me, proved to deliver reassuringly regular income in 2023. The Third Payment Services Directive, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and – the one I still have only the foggiest comprehension of – the Multimodal Digital Mobility Services Regulation ranked among this year’s greatest hits. I look forward to walking you through them next time we’re in a bar together.

Fyffe Banana Skins Cup For Biggest Transport Cock-up of the Year

RUNNER-UP: Avanti West Coast rail, UK
On 27 January this not universally loved UK rail franchise announced it would cancel many trains the following day owing to “exceptional amounts of leave being taken this month” by its staff. From the old excuse of “leaves on the line” to “leave off the line” then.

WINNER: German construction workers
On 15 February, labourers building a rail extension near Frankfurt stuck a drill through a bunch of fibre-optic cables. Deutsche Bahn trains were totally unaffected, but the severance grounded the entire Lufthansa fleet, leaving thousands of travellers stranded. And in the final irony Lufthansa had to put its domestic passengers on to trains instead. Perhaps I have learned the meaning of “multimodal” after all.

Most Blushable Excuse For Missing Business Travel Show Europe
WINNER: [Travel manager name redacted, company name redacted], Sweden
In my capacity as conference producer of BTSE I receive a wide variety of reasons for people declining when I invite them to speak – but this refusal from one travel manager was a first. “Hi Amon,” they wrote, “Thank you for the consideration – seems great fun! Unfortunately I will not be able to attend this time as I will be on a business strip with our management team.” I know Scandinavians are a liberated lot, but this takes team-building that little bit too far in my opinion.

Hallmark Trophy For The Politician Least Likely to Receive a Christmas Card from UK Business Travel Executives, Especially Northern Ones
WINNER: The Right Honourable Rishi Sunak MP, Prime Minister
In October, Rishi Sunak travelled to Manchester to tell the Conservative Party conference that the UK’s new HS2 high-speed rail link will no longer travel from that sun-kissed city to central London, as had been promised for many years. It will now run from Marston Green, a village on the eastern edge of Birmingham, to Old Oak Common, a semi-industrial wasteland adjoining Wormwood Scrubs prison in the nether reaches of West London. “It seems like if you live north of Birmingham you are expected to stay there,” was the verdict of one disrguntled Mancunian travel professional on LinkedIn.

Travel Industry Celebrity Lookalike Of The Year
WINNER: Jeroen van Velzen, Emburse
A new category for 2023! Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that lovable, flowing-maned mobile travel tech pioneer Jeroen van Velzen looks just the tiniest bit like Brentford Football Club manager and thinking mature woman’s heart-throb (if the present Mrs Cohen is anyone to judge by, though not quite as much as Gary Lineker) Thomas Frank? If you can do better, and undoubtedly you can, send me your own lookalike nominations for 2024.

See also: The 16th annual GITs (2022)