Red Carnation win new AA award

On Monday 17 September the AA, the UK's leading hotel rating authority, held its inaugural annual Hospitality Awards dinner at the InterContinental Park Lane hotel in London.

At this, the first black tie event to celebrate its winners, the AA also introduced a new award for Small Hotel Groups, and Red Carnation Hotels were honoured to be named as the first ever recipients of this prestigious accolade from amongst an ever increasing number of excellent competitors.

Peter Birnie, the AA's chief hotel and restaurant inspector, explained that this new award was created to recognise the outstanding contribution made by collections whose achievements are often overshadowed by the larger groups.

He commented "We have seen a lot of outstanding candidates this year and the final decisions have been difficult, but we feel confident that we have picked the best and that they deserve to be acknowledged for their excellence."The AA is widely acknowledged as by far the most objective and reliable assessor of hotel and restaurant quality and Red Carnation are keenly aware of the prestige this award brings.

CEO Brett Tollman, who received the reward on behalf of Red Carnation, is in no doubt where the credit lies. "I'd like to personally thank every member of staff for their unfailing high standard of personal service and attention to detail with regard to every guest, the qualities that have made this achievement possible. From top to bottom, in every hotel, they are the real stars, and fully deserve this wonderful recognition. I'd also like to commend the AA itself for remaining a beacon of high standards and objective judgement in an environment that becomes increasingly confusing for the general public."

Red Carnation is a family-owned international collection of eleven luxury hotels with six properties in England. For further information on these, and on the collection's properties in South Africa, Switzerland, and the USA, visit Redcarnation.com.