Aito operator The Mountain Company has scooped the gold award in the association’s Tour Operator of the Year award.
This award is given to Aito members with exceptional reviews on aito.com, and the runners-up were Peter Sommer Travels (silver) and McKinlay Kidd (bronze).
The 2018 honours were handed out during annual general meeting of Aito, The Specialist Travel Association, in London.
The AGM featured speeches from responsible tourism campaigner Fiona Jeffery, who founded international water aid charity, Just a Drop, and travel risk expert Lloyd Figgins, chairman of the Travel Risk & Incident Prevention (TRIP) Group.
A total of 136 Aito tour operators, Aito agents, affiliated business partners and tourist offices attended the AGM, which concluded with the 2018 Aito member awards ceremony.
As well as the tour operator of the Year award, there were honours for the Aito Affiliate Tourist Office of the Year and Aito Affiliate Business Partner of the Year – both of which are voted for by Aito operators and agents.
Kate Kenward, Aito executive director, said: “We are very pleased to be able to acknowledge the services and support provided by our affiliate business partners and tourist offices, whose contribution to Aito is highly regarded by both our tour operators and travel agents.
“The tour operator award was, as ever, a very closely-run race; Aito members always score highly with their customer feedback.
“It’s great to see some of Aito’s smaller, specialist companies taking the top three positions amongst our 120-plus tour operators.
“We now have over 13,000 independent customer feedback comments on aito.com and it is becoming the go-to place for information and ideas.”
The gold award for affiliate tourist office went to Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority, with silver for the Spanish Tourist Office, and bronze to South African Tourism.
The gold award for the affiliate business partner went to Faremine, followed by SPIKE (silver) and Holiday Extras and Vamoos (bronze).
Pictured from left are: Kate Kenward (Aito), Agustin Garcia (Spanish Tourist Office), Roland Hunter (The Mountain Company), Julie Sibley (Peter Sommer Travels), Zoe Davidson (McKinlay Kidd), Emma Taylor (Faremine), Roy Barker (SPIKE), Clare Purvis and Lindsay Garvey-Jones (Holiday Extras), Thomas Johnson (Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority), and Tony Bean (Vamoos).
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