How Goway’s Micro Film Festival Places Travel Advisors within the Limelight

This 12 months, Goway is celebrating its fifty fifth anniversary as a number one tailored tour operator. The firm has unveiled a sequence of trade-facing applications and the incentives to mark the milestone, together with gifting away $550,000 to the journey advisor neighborhood and even launching a brand new movie pageant.

Goway’s Micro Film Festival is a artistic initiative to showcase fashionable journey storytelling by short-form video. In the spirit of the corporate’s fifty fifth anniversary, the pageant invited members to seize the world by their very own lens in 55-second quick movies.

Submissions for the brand new movie fest opened in April, with three distinct classes: on a regular basis globetrotter, skilled creator, and journey advisors. Goway screened a choice of the quick movies at two occasions, one in Toronto (timed across the Toronto International Film Festival) and the opposite in Los Angeles.

A panel of skilled judges picked a winner for every division, with $55,000 in prizes up for grabs. Entries have been judged based mostly on storytelling and narrative stream, creativity and originality, emotional influence, and general impression.

“We wanted this to be open to travel advisors … because so much of what we do is to serve the trade community,” Mitchell Fawcett, Goway’s vice chairman of selling, instructed Travel Market Report in an unique interview. “We would never do something that big without inviting the travel advisor community.”

Last month, Goway introduced the winners of its inaugural movie pageant. Wisconsin-based Ceera Machotka took dwelling the highest prize within the advisor class for her movie “Fueled by Wonder: 55 Seconds Around the World.”

“It was also incredible to fly to LA for the final event,” Matchotka stated to TMR about her expertise successful the movie pageant. “Honestly, it still doesn’t seem real.”

Celebrating Creativity within the Travel Advisor Community

The Goway Micro Film Festival was created to seize the spirit of innovation that lies on the core of the tour operator’s enterprise ethos. The program completed this by celebrating storytelling within the age of social media—the place quick, genuine, and emotionally resonant content material usually carries the best influence.

“This Film Festival very much is informed by smartphone and social media technology and how that is just completely reshaped storytelling,” stated Fawcett. “When you think of the very first brochure that Goway produced in 1970 to where we are today, 55 years later, travel storytelling could not be more different.”

In all three classes, members have been inspired to submit in both horizontal or vertical video format, with the one limitations being the 55-second runtime, a minimal 1080p decision, and that any music used should be royalty-free.

For its first 12 months, the pageant obtained over 260 submissions, half of which got here from members of the journey advisor neighborhood. Fawcett stated the crew was impressed by the vary of locations featured within the movies—together with a mixture of far-flung areas like Qatar, Maldives, Singapore, India, Japan, Peru, Guatemala, Egypt, and Morocco.

For many, their submission was their first foray into visible storytelling, and Goway’s crew was moved by the outcomes.

“Even the new creators showed passion and heart—that was honestly very touching,” stated Fawcett. “There was definite gratitude that we had a special category for the trade.”

When requested about her participation within the pageant, Machotka stated she was drawn to the pageant as a technique to inform her story.

“When I travel, I love capturing the moments, through photos and videos. It’s a great way to reminisce and live through those memories for years to come, but also appreciate the places I’ve visited, people I’ve met, places I’ve stayed, and experiences I’ve had,” she defined. “In my years of being a travel advisor, no other travel partner has offered something like this, so I knew I couldn’t pass it up.”

Goway’s Short Film Festival Returns in 2026

Following the success of the inagural program, Goway is brining again its Micro Film Festival in 2026.

“Next year is going to be even bigger with more opportunities for travel advisors to take part,” Fawcett instructed TMR. “It felt really authentic to Goway as a brand… it could have been a one-off birthday event, but it feels like something that’s part of our long-term future.”

Machotka encourages her fellow members of the commerce to become involved within the movie pageant.

“It’s really such a fun process, to come up with the idea, and be able to tell your story,” she instructed TMR. “There are so many creative people out there, I can’t wait to see the winning videos for next year. I hope each year, there are even more entries, and they continue to do it for years to come. To inspire people to travel, and document your journey, I think that’s why most of us have a passion for visual content creation.”

For journey advisors who need to take part subsequent 12 months, Fawcett’s beneficial specializing in the narrative side of the video: “My advice is to tell us a story — something meaningful to you that reflects what travel is.”

It’s additionally by no means too early to get began; Fawcett urged journey advisors get within the behavior of taking pictures quick movies at any time when they journey, and to get acquainted with cellular video modifying instruments. Not solely will it turn out to be useful for creating a movie pageant submission, but it surely’s nice content material to submit on social media.

“Even snapping a three-second video when you’re out on a trip can set you up for great video content,” he stated.