Simply the best

LAST year, Scotland's Turnberry Hotel was chosen as Caterer & Hotelkeeper's Hotel of the Year, so gaining one of the oldest of the Catey Awards.

This award, now sponsored by human resources consultancy The Portfolio Group, meant that the Ayrshire hotel completed a hat trick for Scotland's golfing hotels as Gleneagles, and the St Andrews Old Course Hotel are past winners.

For Turnberry, winning the Catey came at the end of a 10-year refurbishment programme, whose finishing touch was the opening of a new £4.5m golf clubhouse. One judge called the hotel "the finest resort hotel in the country", another described its health spa as "a decade ahead of anything comparable in this country".

General manager Christopher Rouse said at the time that service at Turnberry was about getting the understanding and the attitude into staff "so that they look after our clients".

Rouse was seen as the driving force behind the transformation of Turnberry, particularly since the hotel's management had passed from Orient-Express Hotels to Japanese owner Nitto Kogyo. That few people, even within the industry, were fully aware of these changes was said by the judges to be a testimony to Rouse's managerial ability.

This year we are once again looking for a worthy winner of the 1994 Hotel of the Year Catey Award to join the existing list of winners, which includes the Swallow Hotel, Birmingham, the Copthorne Tara, London, the Berkshire Hotel, London, and Gosforth Park in Newcastle.

If you know of a hotel which is setting standards for the rest of the industry to follow, which is providing a role model for other hoteliers, and which is raising the profile of the hotel industry - then fill in the nomination form on this page.

The hotel need not be large, does not have to be well known, and need not have expensive facilities to offer its guests. But it must be keep consistent standards, be well managed and professional.

If you know an establishment worthy of the award fill in the form, together with a supporting statement of no more than 200 words, and send it to Jane Cartwright at the address given on the form.

Closing date for entries will be 16 April, and the award will be presented at a special Caterer & Hotelkeeper dinner to take place on 5 July at London's Grosvenor House. o