More: Globe Travel Awards 2025: Live winners and reaction
Silversea Cruises UK & Ireland managing director Peter Shanks has been presented with the 2025 Travel Weekly Globe Travel Award for Outstanding Achievement.
Shanks won the award in recognition of a career which has spanned more than three decades and has included senior roles in retail, tour operating and cruise.
Companies Shanks has represented include Cunard, Carnival UK, Thomas Cook, Going Places, First Choice and Imagine Cruising.
Looking back at his career, he said: “All the way through I was lucky to have the opportunity to work with brilliant people.
“This [award] is really for all the people who have supported me and I’ve had the pleasure of working with over many years… it means an awful lot to me.”
Other special awards presented on the night included the Unsung Hero, Sustainable Future and Employer of the Year Awards, while the Travel for All category was presented for the second time.
The Unsung Hero Award was won by Tui PRM and accessibility manager Marina Snellenberg, whose experiences travelling with her late husband Alex inspired her to join the operator and drive change in how it serves customers with additional requirements.
Snellenberg said: “This award is very unexpected but it makes me so proud of what I have done and really proud of Tui, for taking me on board with a project and transporting that into what is it today – a solid, accessible holidays strategy that delivers results so customers can access travel.
“I can’t imagine doing any other job; this is my vocation, my passion. Of course my experience with Alex informs what I do every day, but it’s not just about that, it’s so much more.”
The 2025 Sustainable Future Award was won by G Adventures, while Ocean Holidays repeated its win in the inaugural Travel for All Award and easyJet holidays was named Employer of the Year.
Leah Winfield, resourcing and talent planning manager at G Adventures collected the award with colleague, communications manager Stephanie Francis. Winfield said: “We’ve had sustainability at the heart of what we do at G Adventures from day one. So, this award means everything.”
Speaking about winning the Travel for All award for the second year running, Ocean Holidays’ co-founder Harry Hastings said: “We continued to invest in accessible travel and it is front and centre for us. It is a part of our culture and not a project we pick up and put down.
“We need the trade to be more brave and speak to their clients about their needs and to suppliers about how they can help. It would be great to see the trade switch up the ratio with direct to consumer. That is our mission and we have a lot of work to do!
Meanwhile, easyJet holidays’ finance director Michelle Heywood said of its Employer of the Year win: “It’s amazing to win this. I’m so proud. This is about everybody in the organisation – everybody has contributed to this. We couldn’t ask to be part of a more remarkable team.
She added: “Our people are absolutely at the heart of everything we do. We’ve got such a remarkable team at easyJet holidays and we wouldn’t have achieved the growth we have without our people.
“It’s something we feel passionate about and it’s an area we don’t want to underinvest in. Our people underpin everything we do.”