Photo: A number of other Cobden business people and friends celebrated the win with Kathryn and Andrew Stubbings on Friday night at an impromptu get together.
Kathryn and Andrew Stubbings have set their sights on Hall of Fame status at next year’s Victorian Tourism Awards after Heytesbury House won back to back golds.
The Stubbings were again announced as gold winners in the Hosted Accommodation category of Thursday night’s awards ceremony at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Their golds follow back to back silver awards in 2016 and 2017. Kathryn said they were super excited to put Cobden on the map again.
“It’s a hell of a lot of work every year to enter the awards because it’s very thorough and covers every aspect of the business, including community involvement, sustainability, marketing and business planning,” she said.
“We do it to benchmark ourselves and to help more people hear about Cobden and understand what we have to offer here.
“It forces Andrew and I to look really closely at our business each year to make sure we are improving where we need to. With growth in our numbers year on year, it’s something that we find very worthwhile and rewarding.”
Kathryn said the couple sat with other tourism operators from the region. She congratulated Alkina Lodge at Moonlight Head who won their third successive gold in the Luxury Accommodation category.
“That meant they achieved Hall of Fame status, which is a wonderful achievement and is now something we can achieve if we win gold again next year,” she said.
“We would like to thank our support team, the Cobden community and everyone who has helped us along the way.
“Every booking we get helps us invest in this wonderful historic building to make sure it is here for a very long time and that’s something that’s really important to us.”
A number of other Cobden business people celebrated with the Stubbings on Friday night at an impromptu get together.
“It was very late notice – literally a couple of hours – so it was amazing that some people were able to come and have a few drinks and help us celebrate,” Kathryn said.
