Awards, Press and Assocation

With a total of 15 Award categories, including ‘Sports Tourism’, ‘Best Tourism Experience’ and ‘Business Tourism’, the Tourism ExSEllence Awards are the premier awards for the tourism industry in the South East, managed by Tourism South East. They cover all kinds of tourism organisations, from small Bed & Breakfast businesses to large exclusive hotels and visitor experiences. 

Judges were looking for excellence, quality and innovation covering all aspects of the business, from Customer Service, Sales & Marketing, to Training & Development for staff. Judge of the Best Tourism Experience category Roger Budden felt SailnetUK to be the outright winner due to its ‘Excellent product range that has been invested in and developed over the last year to offer an increasingly wide range of experiences for the customer.’ He was impressed by the move to provide new on-site self-catering accommodation, and to buy a luxury yacht to broaden the training and experience offered.

And it was SailnetUK again that impressed judge of the Sports Tourism category Lindsey Horton so much that she declared the centre as the winner, describing it as ‘A fantastic product …with promising signs of becoming a high level sports tourism product.’