The fifth Imholz Federation Prize goes to Beat Eichenberger of Zurich

St. Helena in the South Atlantic, once Napoleon's place of exile, can still only be reached by ship: the last British Royal Mail Ship. This is despite the fact that scheduled flights were due to replace the mail ship in spring 2016. However, flights have still not been able to take off due to unpredictable wind shear.

Beat Eichenberger will be making the journey to this distant, almost lost destination in November 2017 on the venerable RMS St. Helena, built in 1963. It doesn't sail daily or weekly, no, this year's timetable includes just sixteen passages between Cape Town in South Africa and the volcanic tropical island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.

Thus, the Imholz Sponsorship Award starts exactly where conventional tour operators or airlines fail to support journalists: in the realization of unusual reportage ideas and travel dreams.

Beat Eichenberger has made a name for himself as a cruise specialist over the past 30 years and has written articles and reports for the industry magazine Travel Inside, as well as for the daily newspapers Der Bund and Tages-Anzeiger and the German magazine An Bord. As editor-in-chief, he is responsible for Cruisetipp magazine, which is published twice a year.

The three-member jury, consisting of Sonja Hüsler (President of the Swiss Travelwriters Club and travel journalist at Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland), Katharina Deuber (board member of the Swiss Travelwriters Club, TV journalist and presenter) and Christoph Ammann (Head of Travel Editorial at SonntagsZeitung, TagesAnzeiger and Der Bund and STC founding member) warmly congratulate Beat Eichenberger.

The Imholz Award was launched five years ago by the Hans Imholz Foundation and the Swiss Travelwriters Club. The prize is not awarded for the finished published report, but for the idea. Beat Eichenberger's article about his adventurous trip to a forgotten island in the Atlantic will appear in the SonntagsZeitung in January 2018.