And the Winners Are … #QldBlog

As promised earlier in the week, today I’ve got great pleasure in naming the winners of the Great Barrier Reef Queensland Blogger Correspondent competition.

767 bloggers entered the competition. They came from an amazing array of counties (52 in all)—from the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Spain, Malaysia, Belize, Netherlands, Canada, Singapore, Mexico, Italy, France, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, India, Romania, Argentina, Phillipines, Indonesia, Hawaii, Pakistan, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Denmark, Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand, Belarus, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, South Korea, Costa Rica, Moldova, Japan, Kuwait, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Chile, Mauritius, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, UAE, Hong Kong, Ukraine, and Greece.

Interestingly the vast majority of entries were from those in the USA, and from women. This is reflected in the winners list.

Choosing the winners was no easy task. The entries were of a high quality, from some amazing people, and many of the submissions were very attractive to the judging panel who were seeking to find bloggers that they felt were a good “fit” in promoting the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland.

We saw some very creative submissions and I myself spent a whole day looking through them all—and loved the experience! But without further ado, here are the winners:

• Rebecca Cooper (Canada) of Simple as That (see her announcement post)
• Tsh Oxenreider (USA) of Simple Mom
• Chantelle Ellem (Australia) of Fat Mum Slim (read her announcement post)
• U Mei Teh (Malaysia) of CC Food Travel (read her announcement post here)
• Katja Hentschel (Germany) of Travelettes
• Stuart Flatt (UK) of Average Joes Blog
• Kara Williams (USA) of The Vacation Gals (see her announcement post here)
• Jodi Friedman (USA) of MCP Actions (see here announcement post here)
• Jackie Hutchings (UK) of Scubadviser (read her announcement post here)
• Elizabeth Hooper Alton (USA) of PolicyMic

Thanks again to those who entered and to Tourism Queensland (connect with them on Twitter here or on Facebook here) for their sponsorship of the competition. This experience has been a lot of fun, and you’ll hear more about it in June when the above crew gather together in Queensland with me to have an amazing five days together.

UPDATE: sadly we recently heard the news that Elizabeth was not able to join us for this trip. The result was an opportunity for us to add another blogger.

We went to the next person on our short list and Australian Jess Van Den from Epheriell Designs was our next target. Luckily Jess was available at very short notice (just 5 days out) – being a local helped heaps!

Congrats to Jess and our best wishes to Elizabeth – hope to see you next time!!!