VisitBrighton Win Best Destination Marketing Award

Well, it's not everyday that you get to meet a stig and win a top accolade from Tourism South East, but last Thursday was one of them...

Up for Best Destination Marketing Award at The Beautiful South Awards, the VisitBrighton marketing team donned their glad rags and jumped aboard their salubrious carriage ( a Brighton & Hove bus) for Mercedes Benz World in Surrey.

Fashionably early, we quaffed a couple of drinks and got our picture taken with a stig. You try talking to a man in a suit with a visor - you can't see or hear him - its most disconcerting. Especially when you are asked to move, like I was, because the photographer couldn't see 'the suit'. Ur yeah, thanks for that.

Anyway, after a rather scrummy dinner of locally sourced food and drink the awards began. Brighton were up for quite a lot of awards and the Destination Marketing Award was up almost last! Kept quiet with petit fours and local wine, the award approached and the Gold Award Winner was, ahem, drum roll please...VisitBrighton!

John our Marketing Manager and me secretly love going up on stage so we didn't need much encouragement to run up to collect the award from the BBC's Nicholas Owen and Mike Bedingfield from Tourism South East. In fact we were so chuffed we forgot to watch our overhead video that we had slaved so laboriously over.

Oh and it was at that point that John and I were quite glad we hadn't followed through on the bet to swap clothes. I.e. me in a DJ and John in a dress.

A great night was had by all and in all seriousness, this is a fantastic recognition of what we do. It shows we must be doing something right and it feels great to know we're at the top of our game in the South (and hopefully further afield too!).

Congrats to John for heading up our small but deadly team and also congrats to all the winners and nominees on the night including:

• VisitBrighton - GOLD WINNERS - Destination Marketing Award
  
• M's Cycle Hire - GOLD WINNERS - Sport Tourism Award
• Theatre Royal Brighton - SILVER AWARD - Outstanding Customer Service
  
• Yellowave - SILVER AWARD - Sport Tourism Award
• ORB360 - HIGHLY COMMENDED - Best Tourism Experience
• Brighton Marathon - HIGHLY COMMENDED - Sport Tourism Award

You can see all the winners on the Beautiful South website.

Here are a couple of pics from the night.

Sarah