The Croatian Tourist Board organised the award ceremony for the Golden Pen award, given to the international journalists and bloggers for the best media pieces about Croatia as a tourist destination, published in the last year. The most prestigious of the awards are the Grand Prix, given in three categories: for best print media story (magazines, newspapers), for the best broadcast story (TC, radio) and for the best blog post (blogs, social networks).

Tourist Board of Zadar County and the town of Zadar hosted the awards ceremony this year, which was attended by 24 journalists and other professionals coming from 16 different countries. The awards ceremony was held in Petrčani in Zadar and the journalists and bloggers that attended got to visit Zadar, Starigrad Paklenica, Ugljan Island and Kali, Nin and other interesting locations during their three-day organized stay. The winners of the Golden Pen awards were given the unique sculpture, crafted especially for this occasion by the Museum of Antique Glass from Zadar.

The nominations for the material created in 2018 arrived from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, USA, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Hungary, Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Slovenia.

The winner of the best print-media story is David Farley from the USA for his story on Dubrovnik, published in the National Geographic Traveler magazine, titled "Sun Sea Savor" (a version of the article is available online).

The best broadcast story by the electronic media was awarded to Vasily Andreev from Russia, who produced a story titled "Advent in Zagreb" for Russian TV- Rossiya 1 national TV channel.

The best blog post award was given to Chiara Marchi from Italy, for her Cherso le 7 cose da sapere post (in Italian, obviously) about the beauty of the island of Cres - given in 7 reasons why you should visit Cres.