Vote for traders who give a spark to the city centre
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VOTING is open in an awards scheme set up to honour city centre businesses that go the extra mile for their customers.
Nominations closed last Friday and 95 finalists were chosen to compete for titles in 11 categories.
The Inverness City Centre Business Awards – now in its second year – invites shoppers to enter their favourite business.
The public will now have the chance to vote and the winners will be announced in the Inverness Courier.
The initiative was launched by the Inverness Business Improvement District (Bid) in partnership with the Courier.
Bid manager Mike Smith was delighted with the response from the public to the first round of the contest, which attracted 160 nominations.
He said: "Nominations are up by 30 per cent on last year, which is fantastic. It just shows the amount of interest in the businesses in the city centre."
And in response to feedback from businesses, Mr Smith said award organisers expanded the number of categories to add a fashion retailer – an independent and a national – and have split into two the category previously headed cafe, restaurant and takeaway to allow the takeaway category to stand alone.
He added: "People really enjoy the competition and enjoy being recognised as a good business so anybody that gets to the final stage is being recognised.
"It's just unfortunate that we have had to lose 65 of the businesses who were nominated, but that’s based on the number of nominations and just how it was processed by the organising committee."
Among those who won in their categories at last year’s awards was Rebecca Gethins, who runs the Therapy Suite in Church Street.
She has made it onto the list of finalists again this year.
She said last year’s win brought with it a delightfully surprising amount of new business.
"It was a good achievement and I did get a lot of new business from it, which I did not expect. It was really good for us," she said.
David Bourn, editorial director of Scottish Provincial Press (SPP) which publishes the Courier, said the newspaper was delighted to continue its involvement this year.
"City centre businesses are key to Inverness," he said. "We hope that plenty of readers want to see their work recognised with an award – especially those going the extra mile."
Voting closes at 5pm on February 15. Boxes for completed voting forms are at the Courier office on Stadium Road, the Victorian Market and the Eastgate Shopping Centre.
Forms can also be posted to Inverness City Centre Business Awards, Inverness Courier, New Century House, Stadium Road, Inverness IV1 1FG and votes can be cast at www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VOTING18
Only businesses in the Bid area were eligible.
All voting forms must have at least 50 per cent of categories completed and vote for only one business per category.
