This award is designed to recognise and reward providers of services such as meals, sea crossings, event tickets and accommodation. We were looking for those suppliers who have made outstanding efforts to accommodate, attract, and welcome coaches, their drivers and their passengers in four sectors:

• Hotels and Catering
• Theatre and Venue Ticketing
• Tour Wholesaling
• Sea Transport/Water Crossing

This page covers the second of these, looking at theatre and venue ticketing. In addition, the judges selected an overall winner, named Coach Passenger Service Provider of the Year.

Winner: Encore Tickets

Encore Tickets is a specialist agency, with many years’ experience of serving the coach industry.

The company is always looking to innovate and recently launched a niche operation to serve the group travel market.

Encore also offers a unique, money back guarantee on all theatre bookings, which removes the risk from making a theatre booking in the West End, although this has to be subject to terms and conditions.

The company works hard to promote itself, including the production of more than seven group publications per year, as well as mailings and e-marketing. The judges were unanimous that Encore is fully deserving of the award - which they win for an astonishing fifth year in a row.

Who could be nominated?

This category was open to:

• ticketing agencies
• theatres, entertainment and concert venues

… and by whom

Coach operators were asked to nominate providers of services they have admired during the last 12 months.

They were asked to explain why they think the nominated service provider deserves this award – this covers such matters as:

• the ease of booking
• the flexibility and quality of customer service during the enquiry and booking stages
• the welcome provided on the ground to
  • the coach
  • the passengers
  • the driver