Sponsored By: Visit Kent & Southeastern
Category Judge: Amanda Cotterell, Chairman, Visit Kent & Barbara Thomas, Head of Passenger Services, Southeastern

Category Description:

This category is open to any organisation, irrespective of size, involved in the delivery of leisure, tourism, visitor attractions or hospitality. The organisation must demonstrate outstanding performance in a number of aspects relating to their operation including commercial success and evidence of growth, investment and delivery of innovations and improvements, adding value to the county, creating employment opportunities and staff development, evidence of improved numbers of customers and of customer satisfaction with the service/facilities on offer. Entrants must have been trading for more than one year as of 1st January 2010

Quote from the Sponsors:
Tourism is worth £2.5 billion to the local Kent economy and supports over 50,000 jobs making it an important industry to the county. We want to encourage as many businesses in the Tourism and Leisure sector to take part in these awards because it gives individual business a unique opportunity to raise their profile and get the recognition the industry rightly deserves
Amanda Cotterell, Chairman, Visit Kent

Southeastern is delighted to be sponsoring the award for Best Leisure and Tourism Business. We provide transport across Kent, parts of East Sussex and into London and as such, perform a vital service in supporting local and national tourism. December 2009 saw the introduction of our high speed services, bringing London and Kent even closer together and opening up access to the rest of the country. Our high speed service compliments our mainline and metro services, meaning we can now give even more choice to our customers who choose to use us for their leisure and tourism needs.

Barbara Thomas, Head of Passenger Services. Southeastern