After such a turbulent year, it was so lovely to have the opportunity to celebrate a win this week, as we attended the Cornwall Tourism Awards virtual awards ceremony. We were lucky to have been shortlisted as finalists in two categories this year, Wedding Venue of the Year and Tourism Innovation.
Virtual Tourism Awards Ceremony
Last year, the awards ceremony took place in Truro Cathedral and we all enjoyed an excuse to dress up and enjoy a delicious meal and a glass of fizz in the company of a whole host of amazing Cornish businesses. This year, the organising team didn’t abandon this glitz and glamour trend and we were all instructed of the black-tie dress code for the Zoom awards ceremony!
Awards organiser Robin Barker of Services for Tourism said: ‘It would have been very easy to cancel the Awards this year – we did think long and hard about it, but the level of early entries we received in spite of everything, and the creativity and determination shown by entrants inspired us to find a way to make this happen – and your responses and feedback ever since have completely blown us away. The reactions from today’s winners including words such as “overwhelmed”, “heart-warming” and “moments of sparkle” have made it all worthwhile.’
Earlier in the week, we had received an amazing box of goodies from the awards sponsors, which meant we had a glass of Trevethan Gin and Navas tonic in our hands as the results were announced. This was such a special treat to receive, and we must thank everyone for their generous gifts – Jo Downs Glass, Cornish Tea and Coffee, Skinners Brewery, Lovegrove Essentials, and Forthglade Natural Pet Food.
The results!
We were up against some top-quality Cornish businesses in our categories, who all worked tirelessly last year to offer the best possible services to their guests, so we were absolutely thrilled to be awarded Silver for Tourism Innovation and Gold for Wedding Venue of the Year!
Thank you to everybody for their messages of support and congratulations – our social media literally went mad when the news was announced! From our suppliers, to couples who have got married here and couples booked in for future dates, it was lovely to receive each and every message – we have tried to reply individually to everybody.
A year of challenges with “moments of sparkle” along the way
We love that Robin who hosted the awards picked up on my words from the acceptance speech – I hadn’t prepared anything, but just spoke from the heart. For us, this is an overwhelming achievement in what has been such a challenging year for hospitality and particularly the wedding industry. We feel so lucky that between lockdowns we were able to host some small and really beautiful intimate weddings. Creating moments of joy is what we do best, and that has felt perhaps more poignant this year than ever before. We have all needed moments of sparkle in what has been a challenging year for everybody’s lives.
It’s been a year of reinvention for many businesses, and we’ve worked hard during lockdowns to take the opportunity to enhance our offering, creating the new organic play area in Lockdown 1.0 and the cocktail bar complete with gold ceiling in lockdown 2.0 and the currently in progress new outdoor terrace, which will be ready to welcome guests soon!
Our Thank yous!
Thanks to the brilliant Unlocking Potential, for their fantastic business support and inspiration. The Future Focus programme which we joined at the start of the journey to create Treseren, focuses on innovation and has paved the way for our approach in so many aspects of our business. Their support of Treseren for the last two years has been invaluable and undoubtedly a pivotal factor in being recognised for an Award in Tourism Innovation.
We want to say a big thank you to the entire Treseren team, everybody works so hard to make sure that each wedding here is really special and unique, tailored to each couple and their vision for their special day, including our amazing team of local suppliers who share our passion for creating beautiful small weddings and feel like part of the Treseren family
And of course, thank you to our wonderful couples, without you, we wouldn’t have this lovely business! Many of you have stuck with me on this journey since March 2020, some of you postponing multiple times until we’ve finally been able to create your magical wedding day. For those of you that are still waiting for that day to come, we cannot wait to welcome you to Treseren soon and show you everything that we’ve been working on!
We feel the final thank you should go to Services for Tourism for going ahead with the awards and all the Sponsors for helping make the event happen. It gave us and other businesses the chance to reflect on some of the good things from the last year. So, the final words should go to Deborah Heather, from Headline Sponsors Quality in Tourism:
‘Despite experiencing one of the worst crises in living memory, the Cornwall Tourism and Hospitality industry continues to show resilience and shines with some truly inspirational entries to this year’s awards. All of us at Quality in Tourism are honoured and humbled to be headline sponsor of the Cornwall Awards; quite honestly, we salute you all.’
