2023 Sponsors
The University of Central Lancashire
HEADLINE SPONSOR
The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is at the very heart of business, education and enterprise in the region and as such is delighted to be the headline sponsor of the highly regarded and much prized Lancashire Tourism Awards.
As a University, UCLan have developed an enviable reputation for innovation and entrepreneurship offering a wide range of hugely effective and highly thought of full-time and part-time courses in many areas including Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management, as well as being fully committed to Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
Tourism, Hospitality and Events, which falls within the Lancashire School of Business and Enterprise within the University, offers specialist undergraduate, postgraduate and Return to Study programmes for people who wish to, or are working in, management positions in the tourism, hospitality and events industries. Tourism, transport and travel courses are ranked 1st in the UK for overall positivity and for teaching on the course (National Student Survey, 2023) (compared with unis in the Guardian University Guide).
The School have strong links with local, national and international leading companies, including Disney Florida, Marriott Hotels, Events Northern Ltd and Merlin Leisure to ensure our students benefit from real-world learning. The Division also hosts the Institute of Transport and Tourism and The Dark Tourism Forum. Additionally, UCLan believe in providing opportunities for their students and communities to thrive. This is why the Propeller enterprise service supports current students, staff, graduates and local businesses across all faculties and services to become ‘business ready’ through 1-2-1 mentoring and skills workshops. In six years, the University has assisted 851 graduate start-up businesses, making UCLan the top university in the north of England for producing start-up businesses according to HESA.
Recognising Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are vital in providing local employment and generating local wealth is paramount. Therefore, UCLan are dedicated to supporting this vital sector of the economy. The Centre for SME Development responds to the needs of the SME community to stimulate enterprise, innovation and business growth. UCLan work together with you and your business for a more productive and innovative SME sector in Lancashire. The University over the years has developed a significant skill set and reputation within the sector and is thrilled to once again play such a key role in Lancashire Tourism Awards.
Website uclan.ac.uk/subjects/tourism-hospitality-and-events-managementBlackburn with Darwen Borough Council
Destination Sponsor
Blackburn with Darwen is a place where vibrant towns are surrounded by glorious, rolling countryside. Where a strong heritage is celebrated with an exciting new cultural scene. Where crowds turn out in their thousands for some of the country’s biggest events of the year, including the award-winning National Festival of Making, the British Textile Biennial, Darwen Live, the UK’s largest free music festival and more. It’s a place where top names grace the stage at King George’s Hall, where top chefs cook up a culinary storm and where top BMX stars come to train at Olympic skate park facilities.
This is a place where a successful industrial past meets with a bold vision for the future and where there’s a thriving business community with a powerful entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a place with an ‘anything is possible’ attitude, with a deep sense of community pride and with powerful partnerships as a force for good. It’s a place with so much to see and so much to do.
Be sure to discover Blackburn with Darwen.
Website blackburn.gov.ukBAE Systems
Trophy Sponsor
At BAE Systems, the advanced defence technology protects people and national security, and keeps critical information and infrastructure secure.
Always searching for new ways to provide customers with a competitive edge across the air, maritime, land and cyber domains. BAE employs a skilled workforce over 85,800 people in more than 40 countries, and work closely with local partners to support economic development by transferring knowledge, skills and technology.
A group of talented second-year craft apprentices at BAE Systems will create 25 handmade trophies for the Lancashire Tourism Awards 2023. The trophies are a unique addition to this year’s awards programme and it’s another way in which to salute the emerging talent of the county for the winners and those who have crafted these bespoke pieces.
Website baesystems.comB & D Printing Services
Category Sponsor
Large Event Award
Established over 45 years, supplying quality printing and mailing to customers nationwide. B & D are committed to delivering a reliable, flexible and responsive service. Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week and offering a key account management structure. Each customer having their own personal account handler. In-house technical support is available to all customers providing a start to finish seamless service.
Continuous investment in technology along with skilled and dedicated staff have made B & D a very successful company. Being located in a convenient position for the motorway network system, enables easy access the whole of the United Kingdom.
Website bdprints.co.uk
Blackpool & the Fylde College
Category Sponsor
New Tourism Business Award
B&FC for Business is the Fylde Coast’s leading workforce development and apprenticeship provider and has decades of experience co-creating solutions which help boost companies’ productivity. As a college that specialises in technical and professional qualifications, the college are ideally positioned to equip existing and new employees with the latest skills and training to meet the evolving demands of business in the twenty first century.
Whilst B&FC appreciate that businesses need to address their current skills gaps, the proactive approach means that the college are also in the business of helping companies to futureproof their organisations so that they can thrive not just now but in the future.
B&FC understand that in a rapidly changing marketplace, even one which offers numerous opportunities for growth, it can be difficult to keep pace with innovation. That’s where having a training partner like B&FC by your side to guide the development of your team is invaluable when it comes to meeting the challenges ahead.
Website blackpool.ac.uk/bfc-for-businessBooths
Category Sponsor
Taste Lancashire Producer Award
Booths founder Edwin Henry Booth opened his first store in Blackpool in 1847, with one simple aim, ‘to sell the best goods available, in attractive stores, with excellent assistants’.
This aim, straight-forward and uncomplicated though it seems, is still at the heart of everything they do. Since 1847, Booths have worked closely with local suppliers from the northern counties they call home.
Website https:/booths.co.ukBrindle Distillery
Drinks Reception Sponsor
Brindle Distillery is one of the leading distilleries in Lancashire, offering both immersive customer experiences and high quality international award winning gin, vodka and rum for both the on trade and off trade.
Holmes Farm has been in the Singleton family for over 100 years. The inspiration to add a distillery into the mix came one day as the family sat unwinding together after a long day on the farm, enjoying G & Ts. Fast forward twelve months recipes, ingredients and skills were brought to bottling point and Brindle Distillery’s first gin was launched.
Website brindledistillery.co.ukBurnley Football Club Conferences and Events
Judging Host
Burnley Football Club has established itself as the Premier venue for conferences in East Lancashire with a variety of lounges that can accommodate anything from 2 – 250 people with over 250 free car parking spaces.
Eight new super boxes provide the perfect modern meeting or breakout space for up to 12 people. The Clearly Interiors Longside Lounge and the Centenary Suite offer a flexible, large conference meeting space, with fantastic pitch views. So whether you are planning a conference for 200, a board meeting for 10 or a breakfast meeting for 80, there is a package to match your budget.
Website burnleyfootballclub.comThe Centre for Family Business, Lancaster University Management School
Category Sponsor
Family Run / Owned Business Award
The Centre for Family Business in Lancaster University Management School brings together leading academic experts on family business. The centre’s role is to be at the forefront of family business research and thinking. To achieve this mission, they produce insights for family businesses practitioners, researchers and policy makers in areas such as entrepreneurship, strategy, place, values, growth, leadership, sustainability, gender, succession and legacy.
Website lancaster.ac.uk/lums/research/areas-of-expertise/centre-for-family-businessDewlay Cheesemakers of Garstang
Menu Sponsor
Located on the outskirts of the market town of Garstang, Dewlay Cheesemakers produce cheese, five days a week, from milk sourced directly from local farmers. The team of cheesemakers have a wealth of knowledge, with the head cheesemaker working for Dewlay for over 35 years. So there isn’t anything they don’t know about Lancashire cheese. Consistently producing high quality cheese is what Dewlay do best, and all of their cheeses are suitable for vegetarians as they are made from pasteurised milk.
Alongside the dairy, Dewlay operate a state of the art cutting, packing and cold store building. With grating, slicing, prepack and food service lines, they are able to meet the demands for supplying quality, handcrafted cheese in convenient packs. With the capacity to house 2,000 pallets; which is equivalent to 2,000 tonnes of cheese, in the purpose built cold store space, Dewlay offer a complete farm to fork service.
Website dewlay.comDFC
Category Sponsor
Hotel Wedding Venue Award
The DFC experience is a multi-award-winning wedding business, established in 2009 by Robin Kershaw. An awesome team of over 50 employed and self employed staff members, that service over 1,000 weddings and events each year.
At DFC they believe wedding entertainment is so much more than just entertainment on a client’s special day, they believe that booking entertainment with themselves should be an amazing experience, from enquiry all the way to honeymoon. It’s called #theDFCexperience. Build your dream day and let DFC help create the most bespoke entertainment, perfect for you and your guest’s musical tastes. Then let them film and photograph it all with DFCinema, for you to keep and look back on.
Website thedfcexperience.co.ukGood Intent Gifts
Category Sponsor
Dog Friendly Business Awards
Good Intent Gifts are based in Leyland and collaborate with small artisan businesses to produce innovative gift boxes for retail, hospitality and corporate gifting. Suzi Wynne is owner and founder and wanted to launch a business to create sustainable gift packs that are beautifully compact and support small businesses.
The range currently includes a Lancashire Gift Pack, Doggy Gift Pack and Lake District Gift pack, ideal for welcome packs to delight customers/guests in a way that is easy and at an affordable cost.
Website goodintentgifts.co.ukHARRISON DRURY SOLICITORS
Category sponsor
Pub of the Year Award
With over 100 years of experience advising businesses and individuals, Harrison Drury is an award winning and Legal 500 recommended law firm, with offices across the North West in Preston, Garstang, Lancaster, Clitheroe and Kendal. A people business with relationships at the heart. The strength of the business is fundamentally rooted in the relationships with clients and communities which are formed, maintained, and enhanced by the people who work at Harrison Drury and the service they provide. A working environment is created at Harrison Drury which attracts ambitious, talented and dynamic people who will provide the services clients want and need both now and in the future.
Harrison Drury have a team of solicitors across a range of legal disciplines who have significant experience in supporting businesses operating in the leisure sector. They have a passion for the leisure sector, are advocates for the industry, and have a wealth of experience in providing services to the sector. Harrison Drury combine the best of both worlds for their clients, providing the latest legal knowledge and insight with real experience of your sector.
Website harrison-drury.comInsight6
Category Sponsor
Experience of the Year Award
insight6 is the Customer Experience (CX) specialist with a team covering the entire UK and Ireland. We work with over 1200 clients to measure, through our range of CX tools, the entire end-to-end customer journey.
Customer Experience is fast becoming the number one reason why a customer would choose your business and by 2020 it will overtake price as the key brand differentiator.
Using our unique icx6 model, insight6 can partner you to map, train and motivate your team to provide an unforgettable customer experience.
Our team of highly experienced Customer Experience Directors each have brilliant local knowledge on the businesses within their region. The CXD team has individual expertise in a number of sectors including law, pharmaceutical, retail and education and provide the very best service when it comes to training and mentoring.
When you work with insight6, transformation comes as standard.
Website insight6.comLancashire Business View
Media Partner
The must-read magazine for commerce and industry in the region. Its pages contain news, analysis and opinion on the issues that affect business in Lancashire. There is key information that can help businesses flourish, and entertaining features on the personalities behind the headlines. Lancashire Business View is mailed direct to 8,000 high-ranking decision makers and therefore provides an unbeatable advertising platform for companies and organisations wishing to raise their profile in the county.
Website lancashirebusinessview.co.ukLancashire Life
Media Partner
For almost 80 years Lancashire Life has celebrated the best of the Red Rose county, the people, places and businesses that make this such a wonderful place to live, work and visit.
In the first issue, in early 1947, the editor wrote of his desire to ‘reveal the county to its natives as well as to those less fortunate in their county of origin’. That’s what they’ve done ever since. Lancashire Life have always taken particular pride in promoting Lancashire’s tourism and hospitality industry, which is the beating heart of so much that happens here.
Website lancashirelife.co.uk/subLancashire Post
Media partner
The Preston perspective on news, sport, what’s on, lifestyle and more, from the north west’s regional paper.
Editor in Chief Nicola Adam said ‘The Lancashire Post is delighted to sponsor the Lancashire Tourism Awards. The creativity, passion and hard work of those individuals, businesses and organisations, putting our beautiful county on the map, is astonishing and these awards are showcasing the very best of those.
Website lep.co.ukLancashire Telegraph
Media Partner
The Lancashire Telegraph was first published in 1886 and ever since has been at the heart of the community. The newspaper predominantly covers its traditional patch of East Lancashire, while the website has a more regional approach to the county. The team prides itself on providing the very best local journalism to readers, be that live blogging the latest trial at crown court, reporting from the scene of a major incident, holding local power to account, celebrating a new business opening or providing a voice to the voiceless. In the past year, three campaigns spearheaded by the Lancashire Telegraph have been shortlisted at the Media Freedom Awards and Regional Press Awards.
Richard Duggan, Regional Editor North West at Newsquest Media Group and editor of the Lancashire Telegraph said: ‘We are thrilled to partner and sponsor Lancashire Tourism Awards. This is a brilliant opportunity to celebrate our amazing county and the people that make it such a special place to call home.’
Website lancashiretelegraph.co.ukLancaster University Management School (LUMS)
Category Sponsor
Accessible and Inclusive Award
Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) is one of the longest-established business schools in the UK and home to a thriving and truly international community. LUMS welcomes students and staff from more than 180 countries and have a presence in 24 countries, including campuses in China, Germany, Ghana and Malaysia.
LUMS challenge and support creative staff, students and partners to realise their ambitions, as they experience a transformational journey that leads to real impact on whole industries, societies and economies.
LUMS is ranked as the top business school in the UK for ‘research power’ and joint-top for ‘research environment’ (ref. 2021). Their research leverages excellence in the key areas of sustainability, social justice and innovation.
LUMS have a proud and established reputation for partnerships and relations with employers, businesses, entrepreneurs and managers across the Northwest, the UK and beyond, offering unique insights and abilities to introduce positive change.
Quadruple-accredited and world-ranked, Lancaster University Management School is an established community for cutting-edge knowledge; the place to be.
Website lancaster.ac.uk/lums/businessLINKS SIGNS AND GRAPHICS
Category Sponsor
Small Event Award
Links Signs and Graphics have a long association with the leisure industry and it remains a very important sector to the business, over the years they have formed strong links with many of the major names who are active across the Fylde Coast and further afield.
Links Signs and Graphics are more than just a signmaker, creating full colour signage and display graphics, small, large and super-wide formats for use indoors or outdoors. This includes applications such as exhibition stands, illuminated displays, signage, billboards, ambient media and many more bespoke items.
Website linkssignsandgraphics.co.ukNorthern Print Distribution
Category Sponsor
Visitor Attraction Award
Northern Print Distribution (NPD) provides an essential link between tourism businesses and their audience. Distributing over 25 million pieces of print on behalf of tourism businesses large and small to more than 7,000 outlets across the North of England. NPD can help you implement an effective leaflet marketing campaign, that will drive crucial footfall to your business.
NPD distribution will get your message to the right place at the right time. Their services involve geographical and digital online distribution; marketing advice and planning; design and print; targeted leaflet distribution; storage and delivery of your marketing materials; leaflet display; monitoring and distribution reporting. From planning to implementation and reporting, NPD has more than ten years of proven success in the tourism and leisure markets and offers a hassle free service that works.
Website npdnorth.co.ukThe Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business
Category sponsor
Ethical, Responsible and Sustainable Award
Collaborating for a sustainable future. The Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business has the mission to develop knowledge, and to share that knowledge with those working in practice, to make the pursuit of social and environmental sustainability ‘business of usual’. They believe this is possible if an organisation has a purposeful business strategy and the means for putting that strategy into effect.
The Centre is a network of researchers and professional colleagues drawn from across Lancaster University and collectively working with businesses, professional associations, policymakers, academics and other stakeholders.
The Centre is led by Director Professor Jan Bebbington, Rubin Chair in Sustainability in Business and it is funded by the Rubin Foundation Charitable Trust, a foundation run by the owners of Pentland Group plc.
Website lancaster.ac.uk/pentland/Total Foodservice
Category sponsor
Taste Lancashire Award
Total Foodservice is a fifth generation family food service business with values firmly set in superior quality product, trustworthy people and reliable service. With over a century of experience, they know food service. They know quality and value. Family run, practicing family principles, Total Foodservice pledge reliability and a trustworthy relationship and promise to bring you service from people who genuinely care.
Loved by their customers for flexible and efficient service, from the customer service team to the warehouse pickers, delivery drivers to the accounts department, everything and everyone puts the customer and the food at the centre of what Total Foodservice do.
Website totalfoodservice.co.uk