2 0 2 4 / 2 5
The Fully-Researched Awards™
Next up:
SummerStars™ 2004 | 7th June
Then: the big annual awards events | 3rd + 4th November
W I N N E R H I G H L I G H T S 2 0 2 3
National Hotel of the Year!
The stage is set...
Hotel Indigo Dundee
Edinburgh Hotel of the Year
Bridge of Orchy Hotel
Radisson Blu Glasgow
Rising Star GM
Sonas Collection
Judges Lea & Vivian
A moment's reflection
Event Manager of the Year
The Quaichs
The Voice winner Craig Eddie & singer Laura Hunter
The Crusoe Hotel
Gordon Campbell Gray
No 26 By The Sea
Nicholas Gorton
House of Gods
Entrepreneur of the Year
Hotel of the Year Rusacks St Andrews
Hotel of the Year Rusacks St Andrews
W E L C O M E
S C O T T I S H H O T E L S & S T A F F
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO CELEBRATED
2023 AWARDS NIGHT ~ END OF SEASON BALL
Scotland's Tourism Minister
Richard Lochhead MSP
officially opened the awards:
"It's a real privilege to join so many hotel businesses from all parts of Scotland at the prestigious Hotels of the Year Scotland. You represent the best of Scotland, the best of excellence and experience. Well done to the organisers for such a huge event, first since the pandemic. And of course - congratulations to all winners!"
We were most grateful too for the kind stage presence of:
Marc Crothall MBE
| CEO, Scottish Tourism Alliance
William Gorol
| MD, triSaaS | Our very first Manager of the Year in 2004!
Lady Claire Macdonald OBE
| Patron
2 0 2 4 / 2 5
A YEAR OF THINGS TO ANTICIPATE!
Hotels of the Year® Scotland presents this year's Hotel Honours™ for success, achievement and distinction as a year-long programme. Ongoing
awards updates
and
nominations from mid-May, with the sparkling
➦Summer Stars™ and first 2024/5 Finalists announcement on Friday 7th June. A big new development, the
Scottish Hotel Staff Awards™ 2024 inaugural Lunch & Party is on Monday 4th November - the day after the
glam annual
➦Awards Night ~ End of Season Ball 2024/5 on Sunday 3rd. Plus, year-round, we'll have live hotel reviews, offers and more on the dynamic new
consumer site
BestHotels.scot
coming this season.
Take part / FAQ
➦right here
This year our team marks
21 years
assessing Scottish hotels for awards. #HOTYS are
fully-researched and have all these years' commitment to hospitality to draw upon. We'll support hotels, exclusive venues and standout B&Bs every way we can. These national honours are founded on observation over the years, informed by mystery visits, BestShot™ visits, interviews, expert advice, and guest feedback analysis. We've a deep appreciation of our industry's many remarkable, storied people and, by shining a light on the best, we can help show how we can all win.
Nominate people
➦right here
People
are at the heart of what we do best - and often enjoy celebrating most! For certain departments we need hotels' internal suggestions (housekeeping, aspects of management, kitchen teams, etc.) since brilliant and invaluable, loyal talent is so frequently hidden. This year, most staff categories will be presented at the glamourous new Scottish Hotel Staff Awards 2024 final.
ALL THE BEST FOR SEASON 2024!
Gary & Vivien
#HOTYS TEAM
Gary McLean Quin, Chairman
Vivien Devlin, Deputy Chairman
➦Research, Review & Judging Team
President, Vice President & Patron: announcement soon
Nominate
/ Review hotels
➦right here
H O N O U R & C E L E B R A T E
R E S P E C T & M O T I V A T E
E V E N T S P O N S O R S 2 0 2 3 & 2 0 2 4
LATEST - MAY 2024
Well, it's been all go after last year's reboot! As we run
➦Scottish Hotels Support Group (the former Covid help group) and
➦Hotel & Hospitality Jobs in Scotland on Facebook we do understand just how challenging things are. So, we'll continue to do our best to help lift spirits. Last year
➦SummerStar™ Certificates went out as a nice surprise for many, and will do so again this from 7th June. Nomination & Finalist positions for the main 2024/5 awards will be going out from mid-May. The awards process is underway; a bold new Scottish Hotel Staff Awards 2024 is a much considered expansion of the scheme we'll be working on all season. The usual Research / Judging visits run from now until mid October for the big Annual Awards 2024/25 ~ End of Season Ball as we seek out this year's winners.
EXCITING REVIEW SITE COMING
BestHotels.scot is the all-new partner consumer / guest site to showcase the award winners. It's being created right now, to launch this season. There will be a glimpse of its look very shortly. It'll be all about live reviews, year-round ratings, awards results, hotel features, links to your hotel's offers, and much more. Integrated with busy social media, it'll be a core part of the whole #HOTYS initiative. And in a newer development, Active Members - who will have their own unique page on the site - can have a rating plaque / logo, which may help now that VisitScotland is dropping its QA system.
SOCIAL LIFE
Our consumer
Facebook page
➦Travel + Discover Scotland
[90K followers / live since 2016] is where we'll publish
➦hotel reviews like this, boosting posts year-round. In the past the page has reached 6m a month; back online after a rebrand, it'll ramp up in 2024. Our hotels
Facebook page is
➦National Hotels of the Year - Scotland. We're well established on X
➦@HotelsOfTheYear [5K+ followers] and our growing Insta is
➦@hotelsoftheyear.scot
YEAR~ROUND
SUPPORTING SCOTTISH HOTELS
June marks 21 years since our lead Judging Team's very first planning get-together back in 2003 at the Apex International in Edinburgh. Today, we all look forward to working with faces both familiar and new this season as we work hard to enhance the awards and launch the new review site.
NOVEMBER 3RD & 4TH
THE RED LETTER WEEKEND
National Hotels of the Year® Scotland 2024/5 Awards Night ~ End of Season Ball
is on
Sunday 3rd November
in Glasgow. And then, in a big new development, the
Scottish Hotel Staff Awards™ 2024
Lunch & Party will be held the very next day,
Monday 4th November, as we host this core new celebration. (Full info soon on the Events page.) Our award-winning partners
➦Beautiful Events Group are highly committed to the awards - we've worked with them on big occasions over 15 years, so high class events are assured. And we aim higher year-on-year! This season, we'll be offering split ticket payments to help spread costs, too.
MAY & JUNE ONWARDS
RED LETTER DAYS ABOUNDING!
From May on we'll keep
Awards Nominations & Finalist announcements flowing! In mid-May we'll reveal the
new award and rating logos, while in late May we'll share
a first look at the new review site.
Summer Stars™ will surprise and delight from
7th June onwards as this year's summertime honours spotlight what's hot
right now!
21 YEARS ON
RESEARCH | INTEGRITY | EXPERTISE
THE TEAM
Details of the 2024/5 HOTYS Team are on the
➦About Us page - and there's a good few more names to follow for this season! Additional Expert Advisors & Peer Judges will be listed after Mystery Visits are finished for this year's judging season: as you know, we require to be a bit undercover at times! But the President & Vice Presidents and Patron 2024/25 will be named shortly.
GOOD CAUSES, DOING OUR BIT
Our people, individually or as part of other projects, and previous hotel awards, have long supported the invaluable
➦HIT Scotland - and we look forward to continuing this tradition. Additionally, we'll do whatever we can for
➦Hospitality Health Scotland - we
will proactively recognise excellence in employers' approach to mental health as an integral and prerequisite part of certain awards. Additionally this year we seek to raise funds for children's cancer carer / holiday charity
➦Calum's Cabin.
SUPPORT GROUPS
During the Covid crisis we set-up the Scottish Hotels Covid Action + Support Group - it's now rebranded
➦Scottish Hotels Support Group and is there when you need it. Gary and Denny in our HOTYS team manage the very helpful Facebook group set up by our dedicated hospitality friend Renata Fernandes,
➦Hotel & Hospitality Jobs in Scotland.
SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
It is the goal of the current owners of the HOTYS to make the programme and company a recognised
Social Enterprise.
We're taking steps for accreditation. First, we need to finish reestablishing everything - structure, membership, admin, and all that jazz. We'll keep you posted on progress. Our mission is indeed to be here for the greater good of the sector - and to be an enduring good that can be run for decades to come.
SCOTLAND'S HOTEL HONOURS™
P R E S E N T E D B Y T H E N A T I O N A L
HOTELS OF THE YEAR® | SCOTLAND
B A S E D E D I N B U R G H | J U D G E S N A T I O N W I D E
WORKING TOWARDS SOCIAL ENTERPRISE ACCREDITATION
HOTYS MEMBERS LIMITED
® & ™ 2021 -2024 | Hotels of the Year logo is a UK Registered Trademark &
Scottish Hotel Honours & HH trophy logo are Trademarks | Used in Scotland under Licence
from Hospitality Research Organisation ~ Founded 2003 |
www.hotelsoftheyear.com