InterContinental named World's Leading Hotel Brand as UK hotels honoured at World Travel Awards

13-Jan-2012 - Last updated on 19-Mar-2024 at 14:07 GMT

InterContinental Hotels & Resorts were among the UK hotel winners at the World Travel Awards 2011 alongside Premier Inn and Dukes London

InterContinental Hotels & Resorts won the prestigious World's Leading Hotel Brand award for the third year in a row at the 2011 World Travel Awards which also saw big wins for Premier Inn and Dukes London who scooped the World's Ultimate Service Award in Hospitality.

Described on their website as 'the Oscars of the travel industry', the World Travel Awards (WTA) also named InterContinental Hotels & Resorts as the World's Leading Business Hotel Group after JW Marriott won in 2010.

UK hotels were well represented in the list of winners which also included Premier Inn who were awarded World's Leading Budget Hotel Brand and Dukes London who scooped the World's Ultimate Service Award in Hospitality.

Accolade for InterContinental Hotels & Resorts

Simon Scoot, vice president global brand management for InterContinental Hotels & Resorts said: “We are honoured to receive these awards as they represent the views of our peers in the global hospitality industry, as well as our guests. For InterContinental, the awards provide us with recognition of our distinctive ‘In the Know’ experiences, which help leisure and business guests discover the local secrets of each destination they find themselves in."

“Although we're not on every corner and we're not about over the top glitz and grandeur, we go out of our way to provide our guests with a great hotel experience and share our knowledge of the places we're in so they get the most out of their stay with us,” Scoot added.

Dukes London

Dukes London fought off competition from hotels in Dubai, Barcelona, New York to win their award at the ceremony in Doha, Qatar. Debrah Dhugga, general manager of Dukes London and founder of the female hotelier group Leading Ladies of London, collected the hotel's award in person.

"The Dukes London team’s hard work, passion and our investment in training and development are key to our success. Service is the most important thing a hotel provides to its guests, so I am delighted with this fabulous achievement for our team,” Dhugga said.

London beaten to World's Leading Destination

Despite winning in 2010, for the third time in four years, London was beaten to the title of World's Leading Destination by India but Welcome to Yorkshire did win for the World's Leading Marketing Campaign.

Graham Cooke, president and founder of the WTA, said: “The past year has continued to challenge every strata of travel and tourism. However our Grand Final winners have all demonstrated their world-class pedigree over this period, and are currently spearheading the global recovery of travel and tourism."

The 2011 WTA winners were chosen by over 200,000 consumers and industry professionals worldwide from nominations in 1,000 categories that featured more than 5,000 companies across 162 countries.

See the full list of winners here