HRS announces winners of hotel excellence awards 2011

The newly opened Citizen M in Glasgow carried off one of the prizes in the 2011 HRS Hotel Excellence Awards, announced yesterday at the Millbank Tower in London.

The 198-bedroom hotel, which began welcoming guests only last summer, won the Robert Ragge Award for Innovation. Exciting and innovative aspects of the hotel, including self-service check-in on touch-screen terminals and touch-screen Mood Pads in the bedrooms used to control the TV, music, window blinds, temperature, lighting and alarm, were highlighted by the judges as "a commitment to technology to reduce costs and customise the guest experience".

The eight categories at this year's awards recognised everything from environmental responsibility and innovation, to staff training and internships. Judges includes the senior travel editor of The Independent and TV and radio presenter Simon Calder.

Jon West, director, UK and Ireland, HRS, said the standard of entries to this year's awards was exceptionally high. "The judging panel had to make some difficult decisions, but were particularly impressed with the lengths that hotels had gone through to improve their social responsibility while remaining profitable in these tough economic times," he said.

"We are very proud of the growing success of the HRS Hotel Excellence Awards as they do an important job in reliably benchmarking quality service and innovation within the industry."

The HRS Hotel Excellence Awards, in association with the Best Practice Forum and the British Hospitality Association, are part of the Best Practice Forum's Business Excellence Awards.

HRS is a hotel portal which operates a global electronic hotel reservation system, based on a database of more than 250,000 hotels in 180 countries.

The full list of winners, which feature hotels classed as small (less than 50 rooms) and large (more than 50 rooms) include:

● Excellence through People
Small Dartmouth Golf and Country Club
Large Weetwood Hall, Leeds

● Excellent Customer service
Small Loch Melfort, Oban
Large The Balmoral, Edinburgh

● Excellent Social responsibility
Small The County, Chelmsford
Large Westport Woods

● Best Family friendly Hotel
Small Loch Melfort, Oban
Large Park Plaza County Hall, London

● Best Value for Money Hotel
Small The Townhouse, Kingston upon Hull
Large The Cumberland, Bournemouth

● Excellence in Meetings
Sofitel London Heathrow

● Excellence in Marketing
Small Best Western Wroxton House, Banbury
Large The Cumberland, Bournemouth

● Business Management
Small Rothay Garden, Cumbria

● Robert Ragge Award for Innovation
Citizen M Glasgow

Bradford's Dubrovnik hotel wins HRS.com innovation award >>

Innovative design from Citizen M >>

By Janet Harmer

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