Excellence Awards

South West Tourism Excellence Awards 2011 - 2012 
in association with South West Water

The South West Tourism Alliance is delighted to be working with Services4Tourism who will be delivering these awards.  Over 300 businesses have now entered and the judging will run over the summer months. 

Two award still open for entries
The Outstanding Customer Service award is unlike other categories, being an opportunity for visitors, businesses and other third parties to nominate people who have delivered superb service.  Recent winners have included David Pollard of the Falmouth Ambassadors and Bob Evans (‘Captain Bob') of the SS Great Britain.

The Tourism Event award is open to major tourism events in the region such as festivals and shows.  A new category in 2009, the first two Gold winners were the Times Cheltenham Literary Festival and Salisbury Arts Festival.

The deadline for entries for these two awards is Friday 26th August.  Robin Barker added: "Both of these awards recognise essential parts of the visitor experience, and the end of summer deadline means we anticipate receiving many more entries and nominations from across the region."

The awards
There are three separate but linked awards schemes covering Cornwall, Devon and the whole South West of England:

The Cornwall Tourism Awards -www.cornwalltourismawards.co.uk
The Devon Tourism Awards - www.devontourismawards.org.uk
The South West Tourism Excellence Awards - www.southwesttourismawards.org.uk

The awards celebrate excellence in tourism across the South West and aim to promote and reward leading businesses and individuals in the tourism industry, whatever your sector and size. There are 15 categories to choose from ranging from best hotel, event, attraction, activity, holiday park and self catering holiday to awards for customer service, access, sustainable tourism and business tourism.

The awards have proven their worth in giving businesses the chance not only to showcase their quality to the media and customers, but to build morale amongst staff and gain recognition as ‘tourism's best'.  The entry and judging process has also become recognised as an important tool in checking on the development of your business, as suggested by this quote from a recent winner, Adam Millward from the Somerville in Torquay:
"... winning the county and regional award has given our marketing efforts a real boost...  Interestingly, we have also seen a massive jump in the number of bookings from abroad and in particular Germany.  An unexpected benefit was that the process of reflection revealed areas needing development which, for us, meant creating a much more useable accessibility statement."

The Cornwall, Devon and South West awards are all independent, but are linked in that winners from the Cornwall and Devon awards are fast-tracked into the South West awards, with South West winners going on to be submitted to the national Enjoy-England awards.
 
Chris Loughlin, Chief Executive of South West Water and title sponsor of the South West Tourism Excellence Awards, said:  "We are proud to again sponsor awards which prove why the South West is the UK's favourite holiday destination.

"In the past, our Clean Sweep programme transformed the region's bathing waters to be among the best in Europe. Our job now is to make sure that transformation lasts far into the future which is why together with Surfers Against Sewage and the tourism industry we are launching our Beach Live website this summer giving hour by hour information on water quality around our beautiful coastline."

Nicholas Rodda, Managing Director of Rodda's and Title sponsor of the Cornwall Tourism Awards commented: "The Cornwall Tourism Awards are all about Excellence and Cornishness, both of which are central to our ethos here at Rodda's. We're therefore delighted to be headline sponsors of this year's Awards and wish everyone involved the best of luck".

Robin Barker, Director of Services for Tourism Ltd, which coordinates all three awards schemes on behalf of the South West Tourism Alliance, VisitCornwall and VisitDevon, adds: "At a time of major change across domestic tourism, the tourism awards have shown year on year improvements with increasing benefits to all concerned - entrants, sponsors and judges.  I urge every quality orientated tourism business in the region to ‘have a go!'  It's free, you have nothing to lose except a little of your time, and everything to gain."

How to Enter
Full details of the tourism awards, along with details of how to enter, top tips and entry forms can be found at the three awards websites:

The Cornwall Tourism Awards -www.cornwalltourismawards.co.uk
The Devon Tourism Awards - www.devontourismawards.org.uk
The South West Tourism Excellence Awards - www.southwesttourismawards.org.uk

The deadline for entering all three awards schemes is 5pm on Thursday 30th June. But please start preparing now - don't leave it to the last minute!

For more information please contact Robin Barker at rbarker@services4tourism.co.uk or 07870 397438

2010-2011 winners