HAPPY FACES AT THE TUK TUK CLUB HQ THIS WEEK.
It’s amazing how much excitement one email can deliver to a hard working group of people. That’s exactly what happened earlier this week when the team at The Tuk Tuk Club received a mail from The International Travel and Tourism Awards confirming that we’d been shortlisted in the category of Best Adventure Tourism for the 2018 award!
These awards celebrate the success of both private sector companies and individuals and also national, regional and city Tourist boards and tend to be where the bit hitters and massive companies strut their stuff – so for a small (but of course hard working and professional) travel company based in Thailand to make it to the final is pretty surprising and we’re still in a state of happy shock!
We’re very proud to have been shortlisted for this award as we hope it shows that not only do our adventurous travellers and hard working team believe that we’re on the right path and offering something unique, exciting and fun but that also that travel industry professionals agree – and it’s always nice to be recognised by our ‘peers’.
We took part in the awards as a bit of fun really and without any serious expectations.
Well established ‘adventure’ travel companies tend to have big and experienced marketing departments who know exactly how to enter these sort of things and have huge budgets and hundreds of tours and staff to deliver everything. Obviously as a small business, we don’t!
However we are very passionate about what we do and believe strongly that our adventures are at the forefront of putting proper ‘adventure’ back into the world of travel, and making these trips available to all.
Rather than expecting to win we were in some way aiming for some recognition for the team who’ve worked so hard to run our adventures. From our mechanics to our guides, every single person at The Tuk Tuk Club puts their heart and soul into every day at work and it we think it would be pretty and who knows, with a little bit of luck this might just be recognised with an award.
Apparently the finalists in the competition, which is connected to the World Travel Market which in itself is one of the biggest global industry travel exhibitions, were chosen from well over 100 entries so even to just be shortlisted is a pretty big achievement for The Tuk Tuk Club.
We’re now waiting with baited breath to see if we can cause the upset of the year and actually win the award. The winners are due to be announced at a prestigious awards ceremony at London’s Tobacco Dock on Tuesday November 6th and until there we’re keeping everything crossed.
A huge thank you to all of our travellers, adventurers, supporters, friends and of course family – you’ve all given us the confidence and belief in what we’re doing and the resilience to keep moving forwards. Finally, the biggest thanks must go out to our Tuk Tuks – a finer fleet of Tuk Tuks you’ll never find!
For more information on the Awards, take a look here – https://awards.wtm.com/