Welcome to the 2008 TakeABreak® Awards – to find the best holiday accommodation across Australia and reward them for their fantastic work.

At TakeABreak we see so many great places to holiday, we decided to award the best of the best. We know that all of the holiday operators who list with us work extremely hard to provide great experiences for visitors, and this is our way of saying thank you.

Our finalists are...

ACT

NSW

Northern Territory

Queensland

South Australia

Tasmania

Victoria

Western Australia

The best part of these awards is that the results are determined by guests who have actually stayed at each property. TakeABreak evaluates each holiday property based on a range of criteria including guest comments, ratings and reviews by actual guests who've visited the accommodation. This means the awards will go to the properties where guests have the best experiences and get the best service. 

All properties listed on TakeABreak are automatically entered into the awards in the categories under which their accommodation is listed (see award categories below). Operators with more than 5 guest comments in the last 12 months were shortlisted, this was then culled to those with the highest guest ratings across that category. We then look at booking conversion rates (another method of measuring visitor satisfaction) over the past 12 months to determine the ranking of properties by category and state.

A limit of 5 finalists per category are selected based on the above criteria. Where no properties meet the criteria, we do not present an award for that category. State and National Winners for each category are selected by the TakeABreak judging team based on viewing of actual TakeABreak listing and guest comments after the above criteria are taken into account. Judges may optionally contact properties for further information.

Holiday Accommodation Award categories include:

• Self-contained/Self-catering (chalet, cottage, fibro weekender, holiday apartment, holiday house, holiday unit, self-contained apartment, serviced apartment, ski lodge)
• Budget (back-packer, bunkhouse/dormitory, hostel, lodge)
• Hosted (bed & breakfast, farm stays, guest house)
• Health/lifestyle (health retreat, light house, resort, spa)
• Hotels and Motels (boutique hotel, hotel, inn, motel, motor inn, pub, time-share)
• Parks (cabins, camping ground, caravan park, tourist park)
• Farm stays
  
• On the Move (campervan, 4WD tour, accommodated tours, horse-riding tours, walking tours, charter boat, house boat, yacht)

Theme Award categories include:

• Pet-friendly
• Family-friendly
• Gay and lesbian-friendly
• Accessible
• Beach
• Eco
• Group accommodation (10+)
• Luxury
• Tidy Towns
• Romantic

All properties listed on TakeABreak are automatically entered into the awards. Please ensure that the categories under which your property is listed on TakeABreak accurately reflect the categories under which you would want your property to be judged for these awards, as this is the basis for your selection. (For some tips on what you can do to improve your service to the above categories, or things to include in your listing, take a look at www.takeabreak.com.au/themechecklists.htm)

State finalists will be announced in our September Holiday Inspirations Newsletter, and listed on this site. State winners will be announced in October and go into the running for the National Award which will be announced in November.

Finalists and winners will be able to display the award on their TakeABreak listing, their own website, other websites that they list on, and in any marketing material that they produce. Winners will also be provided with decals for their property so that guests can easily identify properties that are TakeABreak Award winners.