The World Food Travel Association introduced the Awards in 2016 as the culinary tourism industry's first awards for excellence and innovation, another first for our industry! Then in 2018, we made several significant changes to the Awards program:

• In the first several years, the Awards categories were changed based on the input from our leadership and our judges, to respond to current industry trends. Then in 2022, we linked the Awards categories to our six practice areas. This move helped us to achieve consistency in awards categories, which also helps applicants know what the future awards categories will be.
• We've announced a new, public Awards Ceremony (taking place annually at the FoodTreX Food Travel Innovation Summit, either live in person or virtually).
• Several applicants in the past did not have credit cards and therefore were unable to apply because they were unable to pay the application fee. We're now able to accept wire transfer payments from most countries at no additional cost. When you request the bank transfer details, we'll let you know if transfer fees from your country are included, or if an extra bank processing fee will be required. And now we also accept Paypal.
  

In 2020, we paused the regular Awards cycle due to the pandemic. The FoodTrekking Awards resumed in 2021. 

In 2020, we introduced a Food Tourism Industry Lifetime Achievement Awards, both to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to our industry, as well as to shine a ray of hope during an otherwise dark time in travel and tourism.

In 2022, we renamed the FoodTrekking Awards as the Global Culinary Travel Awards to help increase industry understanding of the Awards and their purpose.