Posts Tagged ‘Self Catering of the Year’

On Friday 5th June we flew to Chester to attend the tourist board Awards Dinner at the Chester Race Course and we were very pleased to be presented with the new Gold award for our Wharton Lock Apartment, the ONLY gold award self catering property in the City of Chester and one of only two in the whole of Cheshire!

We got back to Spain last night after 4 rather wet, but eventful, days staying in Chester.

On Thursday, we spent the day at Simon and Lisa’s new house just outside Chester – someone had asked if we were going to help them decorate …………however they are still at the knock down and clear out stage! Graham had fun smashing a very pink bathroom suite, our 6 year old niece says its very pretty but Simon and Lisa have understandably opted for a more traditional white one!

Friday brought a rainy morning and a trip to the tourist board offices of Visit Chester. As Wharton Lock Apartment is one of the 4 finalists in the Chester and Cheshire “Self Catering Holiday of the Year 2009″ we were to meet the judge  Kate Simon, Travel Editor of the Independent on Sunday.

Sadly we had not been able to show Kate around the apartment, as the guest who is staying there at the moment would not allow the apartment to be viewed during their stay – and in respect of our guests wishes we had made alternative arrangements with Lucy, from VisitChester, to meet Kate at their offices.

Hopefully showing our apartment “virtually”, with the help of our website, gave her a good idea of what we offer our guests…….and thankfully our new “Gold Award” certificate arrived in the post during our visit and so we were able to proudly show this to Kate during the presentation.

We then travelled to Tarporley, to celebrate Grahams mothers 83rd birthday with her.

Saturday and Sunday saw us back at the new house, Keith had by now joined us from Bristol and Christine, Lisa’s mum, was also there. In the afternoon Michelle, Lisa’s sister, Simon’s Uncle Richard, Auntie Anna and 6 year old Jennifer arrived too! Good job they bought a big house! There was dust, noise and many discussions on the plans…………..together with lots of cups of tea, bacon sandwiches and cakes!

Then back onto a flight to Spain and the peace and quiet…………..but it did remind us how we lived for the 13 months it took to build this house while we lived in a motor-home on the land!

Fantastic news announced today!

Wharton Lock Apartment has been presented with a prestigious Gold Award in self catering accommodation. 

The apartment is the ONLY Gold Award self catering holiday in The City of Chester and only one of two in the whole of the County of Cheshire.

This new award, launched in May 2009, is awarded annually to the top scoring properties in each star rating and is in recognition of the very best of the ”Enjoy England” holiday properties.

So next week we meet the judge for the “Self Catering Holiday of the Year” armed with both our 4 star certificate and our new Gold certificate as well. Fingers crossed!!

We are pleased to announce that we are one of the four properties that have been short listed for the Chester and Cheshire Self Catering Tourism Award 2009. This is the second year running that we have been selected as a finalist for this award.

Thank you to all the guests who wrote complimentary comments in the guest book, as this was used as supporting evidence in our nomination, and also to everyone else that supports us with the upkeep and maintenance of the apartment.

Particular thanks to Simon Tiplady for his hard work in providing us with our wonderful ‘Chester Canalside Holidays’ website and also to Sue and her team at Poppies who keep the apartment so beautifully clean.

Well that was a job that started off small and ended up going on and on ……….we decided when we first had our holiday apartment in Chester that, as soon as we could, we would put our Wharton Lock Apartment forward for the “Chester and Cheshire” Self Catering Holiday of the Year Tourism Award. There was also a category for Tourism Website of the Year and so it couldnt be much more work to put the website forward too and after all Simons (and our) hard work on the website, this could be a nice way of saying thanks to him.

 We had read the paperwork and it said it would take 2 hours to complete the form and yes, that wasnt a bad guide but the folder of supporting information took forever!! We had to analyse all the bookings, where all the guests came from, print out screen shots of the website (Simon had to show us how to make the screenshots look good) and basically blow our own trumpet!

The apartment has been so busy and successful and so many people including other owners and the Chester Tourist Board have complimented the website but it can sound so pushy to say “Hey I’m good!”

 Anyway on Wednesday we took the package containing both submissions and folders of supporting to DHL at Malaga Airport. They happily weighed it and assured us it would arrive in Chester before Friday 11th April (the deadline for submissions) but to our horror they gave us the price of 129 euros!!!!!

So we quickly retreated to the car park and rang Simon to ask him to search for a cheap flight to the UK, it would be cheaper to personally deliver it than to DHL it. Only to find out due to school holidays it was infact expensive to fly it there.

So back in to DHL and part with 129 euros and off it went winging its way to the UK – oh how I hope that at least one of the submissions gets to the short listing! Happily we received an email from Lucy at Chester Tourist Board to say it arrived on Thursday morning – in good time for the Friday deadline. So now we sit back and wait to see if we get short listed and get called to an interview.

How horrified we were to hear, today, that on Friday the deadline was extended for 6 days – this would have meant we could have posted it for just 10 euros! Lets hope we have some success to make it all worthwhile.