WINTON HOUSE WINS WORLD TRAVEL AWARD FOR ITS CLIENT SERVICE FOR A SECOND YEAR

For the second year in a row Winton House has won a World Travel Award, voted by travel agents worldwide. Business tourism providers regard the World Travel Awards, established in 1993, as one of the highest accolades they can receive; other British winners for 2006 are Bovey Castle, bmi Baby, The Balmoral, Inverlochy Castle and St Andrews Old Course Hotel.

The Award once again endorses the exceptional quality of the customer care provided by Winton House to its many corporate and private guests from the UK, Europe and the US. An impressive roster of blue chip companies have chosen Winton for dinners, barbeques, away-days, conferences, overnight stays and team-building activities; these have included Barclays, ING, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Life, Scottish Water, Scott Moncrieff, Tescos Personal Finance, G4 Security and BBC Worldwide, not forgetting many overseas companies from France, Spain and Sweden.

Rob Steadman, Winton's Events and Marketing Manager, says:

"We are justly proud of the quality of our staff and suppliers who all play important roles in ensuring every visitor has a truly memorable time here. Each event is tailored to the needs of our guests; although we always steer our clients in a sensible direction, we rarely say "no!" and do get some challenging requests! We always ask for feedback from visitors and use this to further improve our corporate hospitality and team-building events."

"Clients always comment on the relaxed and informal ambience; the grand surroundings, remarkable ceilings and the masterpieces.

It helps that many of our staff are local themselves, really enjoy working here and are very loyal to Winton: our award-winning caterers are locally-based in East Lothian; Billy Gordon who runs our clay pigeon shooting and is twenty-one times Scottish clay champion, lives just three miles away; Douglas Thomson who is heavily involved in delivering our Winton Highland Games and clay pigeon shooting, and is also our head gardener, lives on the Estate. We even use the George Hood Ceilidh Band from down the road; they regularly perform in Princes Street Gardens in the build up to the Edinburgh Festival, and, incidentally, George Hood is also one of Scotland's biggest honey producers."

Sir Francis Ogilvy whose family live in the west wing of Winton House, welcomes many of the guests in person and often leads the dancing at Ceilidhs, both planned and impromptu:

"Visitors are fundamentally house guests, and we welcome them to our home. Guests have the House to themselves - you could say that we offer old-fashioned hospitality with modern informality. We always aim to inject some fun and humour into their experiences here; I want people to be inspired by their visits and take away more than just a memory."