At the awards held by Aito, the Association of Independent Tour Operators, several Telegraph Travel contributors were mentioned.

For “Venezuela: piranha fishing in the Orinoco Delta”, a piece which offered some vivid new insights into the busy network of canals flowing through the delta, Alasdair Baverstock won the Young Travel Writer of the Year Award.

One of the judges of this award, a celebration of new travel writing talent, said “you can feel the rum go down and the mosquitoes come out”; another said “it brought back memories and made me think back to my own stunning trips down the Orinoco”.

Peter Hughes, a long-standing contributor to the Telegraph Travel titles and a two-time winner of the overall Aito Travel Writer of the Year Award, came second in the overall Travel Writer of the Year category with his elegant “Turkey by gulet: sailing in the company of the ancients”, an article in which he discovered that gulet cruising isn’t just for the young and those who don’t mind roughing it.

The Aito judges agreed with Hughes that “a mix of seductive Aegean islands and the promise of a little earnest archaeology was irresistible”.

For her blog about travels in Morocco, Lizzie Porter, a new recruit to the team, was shortlisted in what was a new category in the Aito awards: the Travel Blogger of the Year.

Read Alasdair's winning article

Venezuela: piranha fishing in the Orinoco Delta

In Venezuela, Alasdair Baverstock explores the busy network of canals flowing through the Orinoco Delta.

...and Peter Hughes's runner-up article

Turkey by gulet: sailing in the company of the ancients

On a voyage taking in the archaeological treasures of Turkey and the Dodecanese, Peter Hughes finds that gulet cruising isn’t just for the young and those who don’t mind roughing it .