Travel Awards service winners announced

“This is the fifth consecutive year that Avis has won this award and that makes us very proud,” says Fabio Lenci from Avis. “Theses awards help to keep us on our toes. Being the biggest car rental company in South Africa, we could perhaps become complacent and arrogant. But winning this award is a goal that we strive for every year, and helps to ensure that our service levels to the industry remain our top priority”.

Given the improved success and transparency of the 2005 awards, Grant Thornton was re-appointed last year to manage the ASATA Travel Awards judging process, by conducting discreet random telephonic surveys covering 12 award categories on Diners Club’s behalf. By the end of January this year, a total of 2 521 ASATA Retail Members ranging in seniority from junior consultants through to business owners and managers had cast their vote in the 2006 Diners Club ASATA Awards.

The voting demographics in this year’s survey reflected that 51% of the votes came from Gauteng, 15% from Kwazulu Natal, 19% from the Western Cape and a total of 15% were from other regions. This shows that the geographic representation of the survey was reflective of the geographical spilt of the population across South Africa.

Speaking at the awards ceremony on Friday night, Managing Director of Diners Club South Africa, Linda Manzini, congratulated all of the winners and hinted that more changes were in store for the awards this year. “We will yet again be looking at these awards and taking them to a new level. We will be focusing on weighted averages, on on-going analyses and on themed voting within categories. What this will mean is that the best companies will come out tops, irrespective of whether they are a small supplier or big player.”

“Diners Club is so pleased to have been involved with ASATA for 17 of the 50 years that they have been in existence. And we look forward to many more successful years ahead,” Manzini said.