The Special Contribution Award is presented by the Travel Media Awards organisers and advisory panel for lifetime contribution to the field of travel media.

We’re excited to announce that Paralympic medalist, TV presenter and journalist Ade Adepitan is the worthy recipient of the 2021 Special Contribution Award. This year The Travel Media Awards advisory board is pleased to recognise the significant impact of Ade’s reporting and travel broadcasting on both the public and travel media.

Ade was born in Lagos, Nigeria and raised in East London. He survived polio as a youngster, contracting the virus at just 15 months old. He began to lose the use of his legs, and aged three his parents migrated with him to the UK. Ade went on to succeed as an international Paralympic wheelchair basketball player and renowned broadcaster.

Ade’s personal sporting achievements include a bronze in the Athens Paralympics, silver in the European Championships and gold in the World Championships. His television work has taken him across the globe; presenting The Travel Show for BBC World News; going undercover with Channel 4’s Dispatches, reporting foreign affairs and travel stories for Unreported World and more recently fronting the ground-breaking BBC Two series, Climate Change: Ade on the Frontline. In 2019 he presented a new four-part series for BBC Two, Africa with Ade Adepitan, traveling across Africa, from West Africa and city of his birth – Lagos in Nigeria – through Central and Eastern Africa and on to the deep south of the continent.

He has co-hosted Children in Need’s annual live appeal show, and hosted countless sporting events, including his BAFTA-award winning coverage of the 2012 Paralympics on Channel 4, co-hosted with Clare Balding.

Ade received an MBE in 2005 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Loughborough University in 2006 and the University of East London in 2010. He supports many charities, including Amnesty International, UNICEF and NSPCC and delivers motivational speeches to schools, charities and businesses around the world.

Past recipients have included Levison Wood, adventurer, author and photographer; Hilary Bradt, founder of Bradt Travel Guides; Lisa Minot, travel editor of The Sun; chef and television presenter Rick Stein; journalist and broadcaster Michael Portillo, and bestselling author and TV presenter Simon Reeve.