Sugar Ray Thomas
The Lily Pond Lawn at Couples San Souci Resort on Thursday, April 27, came alive with screams, applause and shouts in an entertainment-filled awards ceremony where several of the hotel’s employees were honoured and celebrated for their outstanding performance in 2016.
The annual staff awards ceremony was held on the property of the hotel located in Ocho Rios, St. Ann.
The master of ceremonies for the event was media personality and comedian, Elva Ruddock. The opening remarks and welcome was done by Pauline White, human resources officer at Couples San Souci, while prayer was done by Dwayne Jackson.
Remarks were made by general manager of Couples Sans Souci Resorts, Pierre Battaglia. He expressed his gratitude to the workers for making it an incredible year for the hotel.
“I think that looking at it now, we are already four months pass 2016 and I think that we have done an incredible job and our response from our guests was incredible to the point where we have seen our business increasing, our rates increasing and our repeat guests increasing tremendously,” he said.
The guest speaker at the ceremony was Dr Ijah Thompson, who gave an interactive presentation in imploring the employees to believe that they can achieve their dreams and get to their destination.
Then it was all about the employees as they received their awards. Mingled throughout the programme were members of staff who performed musical acts, danced or acted in segments called ‘San Souci Got Talent.’ The eventual winner of that segment was Lovell Anglin of Watersports who delivered a well received DJ piece.
In the meantime, the awards presentation saw employees from all departments receiving trophies, plaques, gift certificates of a weekend for two and among other awards for their hard work throughout 2016.
The employee of the year in the front of house category went to Milton Lewin of entertainment, who also took the title of Most Active Environment Warden for 2016.
The back of the house employee of the year category winner went to Sasha Lewis of Accounts. The team leader of the year went to Marion Walker of the Dining Room. Michael Walters of Watersports won the manager of the year title, while junior manager of the year 2016 went to Shiann Smith of Administration.
Alecia Thomas from the Front Office walked away with the prestigious General Manager’s award for 2016.
The award for the department of the year for 2016 was copped by the Bar.
Employees were also rewarded for giving five and ten years of service to the hotel.
Entertainment was provided by past Digicel Rising Stars winner Cameal Davis.
However, the employees were the real entertainers of the afternoon as they got the audience of awardees, other workers and executives of the hotel on their feet in celebration of the talents on display.
