Birmingham apartments win national tourism award.
Staying Cool, Birmingham’s boutique apartment operator, beat off stiff competition to land the prestigious Best Guest Experience award at the ceremony in London on 4th December.
Shortlisted finalists included the established national and international players BridgeStreet, Cheval, City Apartments, ESA and StayCity.
“We have always tried to put guests at the forefront of everything we do”, said co-founder and Managing Director, Tracey Stephenson. “We have spent many hours thinking about the services we provide and the products we put in each apartment – anything from the way a fork feels in your hand to the perfect amount of froth on your espresso. I’m really proud of our brilliant team at Rotunda whose actions day in and day out mean that our guests really do get a great experience.”
James Foice, Managing Director of the ASAP said, “I am delighted that Tracey and her team at Staying Cool have been recognised for the Best Guest Experience at the ASAP industry awards 2014. Clearly outstanding efforts are made to welcome their guests from bespoke fine dining options, to setting up gyms in apartments. Every conceivable effort is made to ensure guests leave feeling elated and this level of detail, which is also supported through the results of the ASAP Quality Assessment programme, is testament to the excellent product delivered by Staying Cool.”
Staying Cool’s General Manager, Gavin Burns, said: “We want our guests to go away feeling great about their choice to stay with us. We do that by thinking about the type of guests we attract – or want to attract. For instance, we realised that families often find serviced apartments more convenient than hotels and therefore we created Cool for Kids. This free package gives families the essentials they need such as cots and highchairs plus fun items such as dressing up boxes, drawing materials and complimentary gifts for each child.
“We look at what guest need and create solutions in response to that. This ranges from Christmas shoppers to business people who stay on a long-term basis but go home at weekends – for them we came up with a ‘leave and retrieve’ service which stops them having to lug everything home.”
“We introduced Cooking Cool, which gives guests everything they need to cook a two-course meal in their apartment. We provide the recipes and stock their fridges with the ingredients before arrival. We want our guests to feel at home; we’ve always provided free Wi-Fi for our guests, but we’ve recently invested heavily in fibre optic broadband to give everyone the best possible experience. We’ve also expanded our Sky TV offering over the past few months and upgraded the TVs in our larger apartments to 50″. Understanding who our potential guests are, and then using that to anticipate what they want and need, is key to what we do. Everyone is a VIP,” said Gavin.
The ASAP Awards are highly acclaimed in the serviced apartment industry. The theme of this year’s conference was The Guest Experience, so it was extra special that Staying Cool won that award this year.