It was the day of the 2019 Swansea Bay Tourism Awards, we dug out our finery and dusted off the cobwebs. The babysitter arrived aka Nana Wendy so we swiftly left and made our way to The Brangwyn Hall for an unexpected evening. It looked fantastic and oh so Oscars! You could feel the excitement in the room as everyone began to take their seats and the presenter took his place on stage to begin the evening.

We were lucky enough to share our table of 10, with 3 other other small business owners, needless to say after a few bottles of wine, we were well on our way to having a great night with our new found friends! (Boo’s kitchen, Gower Cider Festival & Escape Rooms)

The evening was fun, to start the event we enjoyed a 3 course meal. When the awards begun there were lots of loud cheers for the winners as they received their awards and had photographs on stage. The support shown to the business owners and their teams by the audience was really heart warming and it felt great to be a part of it. As the evening drew near to the end, no-one on our table had managed to scoop an award and our category was yet to be announced- Best Multi Activity Business. We had some stiff competition, being up against some large organisations. So were hoping for runner up, if I’m honest we’d have been pretty disappointed not to get that. Of course, there was that tiny secret hope to win it!

So, our category was upon us and the excitement, not just from myself and Dave, but the rest of our table was through the roof! The presenter introduced the category and called out the names of the nominees, there were 5 in total. Unlike the previous time we went and managed to scoop runner up ‘highley commended award’ and got called out before the winners, this year they decided to call out the winner first, followed by the runners up. So, it was a HUGE surprise when he called out RIPNROCK as the winner!! Our alcohol fueled table erupted ! We got to our feet and enjoyed every step towards the stage as the entire room clapped and cheered. We collected the award and posed on stage for our photos. A mixture of surprise and excitement was soon followed by pure joy and pride.

After photos back stage, we went back to the table to a wonderful welcome of congrats from our new friends (and Big sis of course-never one to miss a party!) followed by a fun after party with friends and fellow business owners for more drinks and dancing!! We couldn’t stop smiling 😊

It’s such a lovely feeling knowing that you’re doing something right and that your hard work is recognized by others in the industry. We are very grateful to all the judges on the panel for choosing us and hope to catch up with them for a chat sometime soon to see how we can improve even more. My biggest thanks of course goes to my super, amazing, hard working team & all our wonderful customers for choosing us for their adventures !

Until next time…….