The region’s South West Tourism Excellence Awards have just been announced as a Finalist in the ‘Best Regional Awards’ category of the 2018 ‘AwardsAwards’.
The South West awards have seen year-on-year growth with record entries in 2017/18, linking in with county schemes in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Bristol, Bath and Somerset. Many winners are also nominated to represent the region in the national VisitEngland Awards, in which the South West maintains its position as England’s top region for quality, winning more awards than any other for the past 5 years.
Awards organiser Robin Barker says: “Being recognised as a Finalist for ‘Best Regional Awards’ is a fantastic recognition for the awards, our tourism industry and the joint working we enjoy with the wider business community of the South West. It’s not easy running the Awards in a region with our shape and diversity. Other regions are often blessed with public funding, better road networks and venues that can seat 1,100 or more – but we are blessed with the best quality tourism offering in the UK, and we are delighted to work as part of this.
“It is of course only possible with support of sponsors, destination supporters and the awards team, including our fabulous work-experience students from Plymouth University.”
The awards are run primarily to support the most important industry in England’s top tourism region. A survey of entrants in February saw 146 completed questionnaires, in which the four most popular answers to the question ‘Please tell us why you entered the Awards’ were:
· To get independent feedback / benchmarking for my business – 76%
· To improve my business – 70%
· For PR and media coverage – 69%
· For the chance of winning – 67%
In parallel the Awards websites saw 115,000 page views and peak Twitter reach of 227,000.
Robin Barker is excited about the future: “We are clearly waiting in anticipation for the results of the AwardsAwards. The 2018/19 Awards will be launching very soon and we look forward to working with everyone across the region to make it yet another record year.”
The AwardsAwards event itself will be at the Waldorf in London on Friday 27th April when the region will learn who will win what. More information is available at awardsawards.co.uk.
