For the second year in a row, Macdonald Hotels & Resorts has again been awarded Gold Crown status for eight of its resorts by the world’s leading provider of holiday exchange services – RCI.
The RCI Gold Crown rating is RCI’s highest accolade for resort quality and is largely based on the feedback and comments from the thousands of RCI members who, at RCI’s invitation, complete an RCI Welcome Home comment card on return from their RCI exchange holidays.
The RCI Gold Crown awards were presented to its four Spanish resorts; La Ermita, Dona Lola, Leila Playa, Villacana, Spain; The Macdonald Elmers Court Hotel & Resort in the New Forest, UK; Macdonald Plas Talgarth Holiday Resort in the Snowdonia National Park in Wales; the Macdonald Forest Hills Hotel & Spa in the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park, and the Macdonald Spey Valley Golf & Country Club in Aviemore, both in Scotland, rounding out Macdonald’s RCI Gold Crown winners. Macdonald Lochanhully Woodland Club in Scotland’s Cairngorm National Park also secured RCI Silver Crown status for the second year.
In addition to member feedback, other criteria taken into consideration when awarding RCI Gold Crown status to a resort are that it meets RCI’s exacting standards in areas such as housekeeping, maintenance, hospitality service levels, and check-in/check-out efficiencies, as well as satisfying an evaluation of on-resort guest facilities, amenities and services.
Simon Jackson, CEO of Macdonald Resorts, said: “It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our teams that they have secured the much-coveted RCI Gold Crown award for a second time.
“We are visited by thousands of guests throughout all our resorts and we aim to delight each of them. To have had such positive feedback from RCI guests and our local RCI services manager recognises the efforts that staff in all our resorts go to, both in the UK and Spain, to give guests the warmest welcome, great food and the attention with which the Macdonald brand has become synonymous.”
RCI has more than 40 years’ experience in supporting staff at its affiliated resorts in the day-to-day resort operations, as well as helping more than a million families to get away on exchange holidays each year. The RCI member community now numbers 3.8 million timeshare owners worldwide, with more than 4,000 resorts affiliated to its holiday exchange programme in over 100 countries.
Dimitris Manikis, VP, Business Development, RCI Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: “Delivering a quality holiday experience to our members lies at the heart of our core purpose and promise. It means everything to RCI to know that our members can be assured they will enjoy a consistent quality across the resorts we send them to and for that reason we applaud and congratulate Macdonald Resorts for investing in providing a guest experience that both meets and exceeds the expectations of our members, as is evident from the feedback we have received from those visiting these deserving resorts.”
Macdonald Hotels & Resorts is privately owned and has been offering guests fine hospitality options for 25 years. It operates over 40 hotels across the UK and has resorts in the UK, Spain and Portugal.