Thistle Hotels  saw great success at the inaugural North East Hotels Association (NEHA) Awards last week, gaining recognition in five of the eleven categories. The County Hotel in Newcastle and Thistle Middlesbrough fought off stiff competition from the best hotels in the North East to win the honours, which included three prestigious Gold Awards.

The deserving recipients of the Gold Awards were Paul White, Deputy Manager of Thistle Middlesbrough’s Otium Health Club, who scooped the top prize for Leisure Excellence; Michael Barclay from The County Hotel, who picked up the Gold Award for Cleanliness in his role as Kitchen Porter; and Laura McLeish, also from The County Hotel, who was awarded the independently-selected honour for her stand-out support of the Tourism Tyne & Wear training initiative which aims to improve the local tourism knowledge amongst customer-facing teams in the area.

It was an extremely successful night for Thistle, with Thistle Middlesbrough’s Receptionist, Leslie Taylorson taking home the Bronze Award in the Arrivals Experience category while The County Hotel’s Lina Patterson was runner up in the Rising Star of the Year category, affectionately known as The Little Acorn Award.

The ceremony, hosted by the Marriot Gosforth Park, was the very first to be held by the NEHA, whose members come from all over the North East region from Middlesbrough in the south to Berwick in the north. With 300 attendees at the dinner, the event was a huge success and all involved will be looking forward to the second event next year.

Thistle Middlesbrough’s General Manager, Damon Roberts, who is also Joint Chairman of the NEHA, commented; “The awards ceremony was a first for all of us and I was delighted with how it went. I’m thrilled for Paul and Leslie, both very worthy winners and great ambassadors for Thistle Middlesbrough. I’d also like to extend my congratulations to our winning colleagues at The County Hotel, who have set a great example. We hope to continue our success in next year’s ceremony.”