Winner’s Circle Tourism Awards
2025 Winner’s Circle Tourism Award Categories
Restaurant Service Champion
This award recognizes the restaurant staff member who provides exemplary service to guests and uses their own imagination as well as resources at the restaurant to enhance the guest experience.
Hotel Service Champion
This award is designed to recognize the hotel, motel, vacation rental or resort employee that repeatedly goes above and beyond to make every guest feel special. This is the person that guests remember and ask for by name.
Attraction Service Champion
This award recognizes an attraction employee that repeatedly goes above and beyond to make every guest feel special. This is the person that guests remember and ask for by name.
Rising Star Champion
This award category recognizes the newest individual on your hotel, attraction, retail or tourism-focused business team who is always willing to give time, talent, imagination and resources to create the ideal environment leading to the ultimate guest experience.
Volunteer Champion
This award category recognizes the newest individual on your hotel, attraction, retail or tourism-focused business team who is always willing to give time, talent, imagination and resources to create the ideal environment leading to the ultimate guest experience.
Innovation Champion
This award category recognizes an individual or team that used imagination, creativity and innovation to enhance how their organization works and, ultimately, how this innovation resulted in attracting new or repeat guests and customers.
Humanitarian Champion
This award recognizes the contribution of an individual, a team, business or organization in the Highlands County tourism industry for service in aiding and assisting others.
Sports Tourism Champion
This award recognizes the contribution of an individual, team, event, business or organization in the Highlands County sports tourism industry.
Restaurant Service Champion
This award recognizes the restaurant staff member who provides exemplary service to guests and uses their own imagination as well as resources at the restaurant to enhance the guest experience. This person goes above and beyond the call of duty to provide exemplary service and hospitality, encourages repeat business and has a customer following. This is the person who doesn’t think twice about stepping in to solve any size problem, taking on tasks in addition to their assigned duties or covering for other team members. It should be second nature for this nominee to perform amazing acts of customer service and to show genuine kindness to customers. The nominee can be a representative from any local restaurant or hotel restaurant catering to visitors and involved with tourism in Highlands County. The winner will be chosen by our independent panel of judges.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Hotel Service Champion
This award is designed to recognize a hotel, motel or resort employee that repeatedly goes above and beyond to make every guest feel special. This is the person that guests remember and ask for by name. Guests are often compelled to write letters of praise about this person, and repeat guests let management know they like to return because of the thoughtfulness and consideration this person shows. The recipient of this award should show absolute professionalism and genuine care for the welfare of guests and the property. He or she displays a winning attitude about their job and the property. He or she could be a representative from any department at any hotel, resort, vacation rental or campground catering to visitors and involved with tourism in Highlands County. The winner will be chosen by our independent panel of judges.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Attraction Service Champion
This award recognizes an attraction employee that repeatedly goes above and beyond to make every guest feel special. This is the person that guests remember and ask for by name. Guests are often compelled to write letters of praise about this person and repeat guests let management know they like to return because of the thoughtfulness and consideration this person shows. The recipient of this award should show absolute professionalism and genuine care for the welfare of guests and the attraction. He or she displays a winning attitude about their job and the attraction. He or she could be a representative from any staff position, except executive management, at any attraction business catering to visitors and involved with tourism in Highlands County. The winner will be chosen by our independent panel of judges.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Rising Star Champion
This award category recognizes the newest individual on your hotel, attraction, retail or tourism-focused business team who is always willing to give time, talent, imagination and resources to create the ideal environment leading to the ultimate guest experience. This person will have been on your team for less than one year. Age is not a defining factor; length of service with your organization is. This is a person that shows existing employees, by example, the execution of quality tourism hospitality service, leaving a lasting impression on staff, management and guests. By his or her attitude and actions, the nominee shows great promise and a bright future as a hospitality industry professional. The recipient can be a representative from a hotel, attraction or any service-related business catering to visitors and involved with tourism in Highlands County. The nominee may be from any tier, from entry level through executive management. The winner will be chosen by our independent panel of judges.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Volunteer Champion
This category recognizes the true spirit of volunteerism: a person who offers his or her time, energy and skills for a service or undertaking that benefits others without compensation. It seeks to highlight the energy, enthusiasm, flexibility and dedication the volunteer nominee gives to their organization, and how their efforts contribute to the success of tourism in Highlands County. The recipient, no matter what their age, should display sincere desire to give their time for the benefit of the visitors to Highlands County. The nominee can engage in volunteerism at a visitor information center, attraction, park, museum, hotel, restaurant, volunteer board or any property or organization involved with tourism in Highlands County. The nominee should display exceptional customer service, provide information in a friendly manner and consistently do whatever is in their power to meet the needs and requests of guests at their workplace. They should display not only qualities of customer service but also leadership. Judges will take into account the level of involvement, duration of and commitment to service, and guest satisfaction. The winner will be chosen by our independent panel of judges.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Innovation Champion
This award category recognizes an individual or team that used imagination, creativity and innovation to enhance how their organization works and, ultimately, how this innovation resulted in attracting new or repeat guests and customers. We are looking for the person or team that implemented a truly innovative idea in the past year that created proven positive results. Explain how this idea was hatched and implemented and include details on the measurable results of how it impacted your business, staff, guests and the community. The recipient can be a from a hotel, attraction, retail establishment, restaurant or any property catering to visitors and involved with tourism in Highlands County. The individual or team can be at any tier within your organization, from entry level to top management. The winner will be chosen by our independent panel of judges.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Humanitarian Champion
This award recognizes the contribution of an individual, a team, business or organization in the Highlands County tourism industry for service in aiding and assisting others. These humanitarian efforts may include volunteer hours, corporate support for volunteerism, a fundraising campaign, relief efforts or specific campaigns or programs that serve a local or overseas population in need of assistance. Nominees should exhibit humanitarian qualities such as honesty, integrity, responsibility, compassion, courage and an exemplary commitment of time and energy to serving others. Please provide details on the positive impact this effort has had on your property, business or organization, and how it ultimately benefited those involved. The nominee can be from a hotel, attraction, restaurant, retail establishment or any property catering to visitors and involved with tourism in Highlands County. The winner will be chosen by our independent panel of judges.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Sports Tourism Champion
This award recognizes the recipient’s dedication to sports tourism in Highlands County by consistently growing sports tourism participation, increasing the promotion and marketability of Highlands County to visitors, and producing a sports tourism event or series of sports tourism events that shows a profound impact on the Highlands County economy through out-of-town visitation.Tourism Awards Nomination Form
Winner’s Circle Tourism Awards Rules & Information
Nominations must be submitted to the awards page by March 1, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. deadline. Nominations not entered into the online system will NOT be accepted and cannot be read by the judges.
Please make sure the events, occurrences, or comments that justify your nomination took place between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024. Only current award period nominations are eligible.
We ask for a high-resolution, headshot-style photo of each nominee for promotional purposes. Please be sure to upload an in-focus photo that shows the smiling face of your nominee.
Remember that a Winner’s Circle Tourism Award is about exceeding expectations and our tourism and hospitality workers being tourism ambassadors who go above and beyond their typical, everyday duties. Through their performance and actions, they are creating situations that result in happy, grateful, surprised and delighted guests that can’t wait to return to the Sebring area. These guests are so wowed they want to tell the world how wonderful that special person is that they met during their vacation. They are also people who make the operation of your tourism-related business better, faster, friendlier, more efficient, etc. so that your property is much more pleasing to your guests and your staff thoroughly enjoys coming to work each day.
Be sure your nominations are well-written and provide specific examples of what makes the nominee outstanding and how they encourage positive views of the destination. Describe with specific examples of how they think outside the box and exceed expectations.
Please read the Tips for Nominators document for more hints and examples.
Be sure to invite and bring all your nominees to the Tourism Awards Presentation, held in May 2025 – date, time and location to be announced.
Tips for Winner’s Circle Tourism Award Nominations
Let’s assume that anyone you feel is good enough to be nominated has certain qualities, such as a positive attitude, a smiling face and a knack for making guests comfortable and happy. Some suggestions are:
- Focus on specific examples, and describe them in as much detail as possible. People like to hear stories. Use a quote from a guest comment or letter specifying a specific incident or service that the employee provided. “Always kept our room clean” is not as exciting as “made a different special animal sculpture each day out of towels for our toddler.”
- Mention a specific time when she or he went WAY above and beyond like working a double shift for a colleague who had to leave for a family emergency, or driving to deliver a valuable item that a guest left in their room before their flight from Orlando International Airport was to depart.
- Highlight something very creative that they came up with that improved your business. Examples include a service idea, a marketing idea, an event, a better way to repair something, a solution to a logistical problem or a suggested new menu item.
- Describe a time they saved the day. Did they turn an unhappy guest into a happy one? Tell the story!
- Instead of saying they’re loyal or a long-time employee, give specifics about their many years of service, and make it personal. For example: “He’s been driving to work round trip everyday from Polk County for the last 10 years.” Or “She came to us as a housekeeper, the young mother of a 4-year-old daughter. Over the last 20 years she has risen through the ranks to become Head Housekeeper, inspiring that daughter, now 24, to pursue a hospitality career. Her daughter is now building a career in our marketing department.” That’s a story!
- Use descriptive phrases in your nomination form when talking about something they do or did in the community. How you word it is important! For example:
- Good: He volunteers for Habitat for Humanity.
- Better: He has sacrificed this year’s vacation time volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.
- Best: He has sacrificed this year’s vacation time volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. He’s part of a team that has built five houses for Habitat for Humanity over the last three years.
- Remember that you know these people – the judges probably do not. Bring them to life and make the judges fall in love and vote for them!