Aware­ness of Trinidad & To­ba­go's Car­ni­val, "the moth­er of all Caribbean Car­ni­vals," con­tin­ues to cross bor­ders and gar­ner in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion. Car­ni­val: It's Par­ty Time in the Caribbean, an ar­ti­cle which ap­peared late last year in the Mi­a­mi Her­ald-a South Flori­da news­pa­per that reach­es more than 200,000 read­ers, was judged the Best In­ter­na­tion­al Fea­ture at the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion's (CTO) Caribbean Me­dia Awards. At a cer­e­mo­ny held on Oc­to­ber 20, in Mon­tre­al, win­ning jour­nal­ist Melanie Reffes re­ceived the award for her sto­ry, that was a di­rect re­sult of ef­forts by the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny's (TDC) Unit­ed States-based pub­lic re­la­tions firm, Cheryl An­drews Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

"We would like to send heart-felt con­grat­u­la­tions to the jour­nal­ist for her great work in putting Car­ni­val and T&T top of mind among savvy trav­el­ers," said San­dra Perkins, TDC CEO. "On­go­ing pub­lic re­la­tions ef­forts that gen­er­ate pos­i­tive news cov­er­age in top me­dia out­lets play a crit­i­cal role in help­ing us at­tract new vis­i­tors, build ho­tel, guest house and tourism part­ner rev­enues as well as main­tain re­la­tion­ships with friends and fans of the is­land. "It's our mis­sion that we stay on the radar of our tar­get au­di­ences to en­sure that T&T is the des­ti­na­tion of choice when they trav­el." The writer, award-win­ning jour­nal­ist Melanie Reffes, her­ald­ed Trinidad's Car­ni­val as "the best par­ty on earth" and "the grand­dad­dy" of all Caribbean Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

The ar­ti­cle goes on to men­tion Panora­ma and J'Ou­vert, key events that sep­a­rate the des­ti­na­tion's cul­tur­al ex­trav­a­gan­za from its re­gion­al coun­ter­parts. "For the par­ty hearty, the Trinidad Car­ni­val is a must-see and a must-do," com­ment­ed Reffes. "I rec­om­mend all my read­ers who want to keep their mo­jo sky high or just like a great par­ty, make plans to head to Trinidad dur­ing Car­ni­val. It's one of the most au­then­tic slices of lo­cal life in the Caribbean." CTO's Caribbean Me­dia Awards ho­n­our the best fea­ture print, on­line and broad­cast place­ments as well as pho­tog­ra­phy from Cana­di­an-based me­dia that have cap­tured the essence of the re­gion in their sto­ry­telling. Sub­mis­sions were ac­cept­ed from CTO gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, pub­lic re­la­tions part­ners and mem­bers of the news me­dia and judged by a pan­el from the hos­pi­tal­i­ty, lit­er­ary and me­dia fields.