MEDIA RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Travellers have their say on the best accommodation in Australia

TakeABreak.com.au Inaugural Winners announced

November 21, 2007 - The votes are in for the leading accommodation sites across Australia with guests rating their favourite hotels, motels, hostels, B&Bs and accommodation parks.

TakeABreak.com.au, Australia�s only independent boutique accommodation website, has initiated a first time �Best Places to Stay� award for the tourism industry which recognises outstanding service in specialist segment categories.

Winners were selected via an exhaustive process from over 11,000 properties in 1400 localities and 39 accommodation types.

And this time the guests were the ultimate judges with the finalists having to qualify with a consistent 4/5 rating from five or more guest comments.

Using this feedback to narrow down the field to around 300 finalists, the TakeABreak.com.au team then reviewed each property on a number of criteria, eventually selecting a winner in each category.

16 categories were judged in total with winners awarded in segments such as , Beach, Budget, Eco, Family-friendly, Pet-friendly, Romantic and Self-contained accommodation.

In the Family-friendly category, farmstays were strongly rated in each state by TakeABreak.com.au�s guest reviewers.  An example of this is in Western Australia where Pemberton Farm Chalets outside of Perth ranked highly for the extra consideration they had shown to families.  In addition to scoring high marks for excellent value in this self-contained accommodation, it was noted that there were plenty of activities for children in a safe environment.  These include interaction with the farm animals, a children�s adventure playground, swimming pool, trampoline and tennis courts. 

Penny Young, joint CEO of TakeABreak.com.au explained �We wanted to instigate these awards to showcase accommodation providers who consistently do an outstanding job in meeting and exceeding their guests� expectations.   We felt there was a huge gap in the market for recognition in these specialist categories of accommodation by the travelling public.�

�By holding these awards and nominating the �best of the best� it gives visitors to our site the confidence that they will find a range of truly outstanding accommodation in whatever category they are searching.� Young concluded.