A plea for votes!

Staff take to the Close 'X Factor' style to secure your vote

If you've been on our Twitter feed or Facebook page it won't have escaped your attention that we are thrilled to have been nominated for the British Travel Award for Best UK Heritage Attraction 2012.    There's under two weeks left to vote, so our staff took to the Close to campaign for your vote! 

Craig Miller our General Manager had this to say: “It is hugely prestigious to even receive a nomination in this category, as the UK has so many wonderful heritage attractions, but we made it down to the top four, and we’re just hoping that we get enough support to make it all the way to the top spot,” comments general manager, Craig Miller.  “We don’t quite have the profile of some of the other shortlisted candidates –which includes St Paul’s Cathedral in London – but we make up for that with a visitor experience that is second to none, combining an unseen tour of Edinburgh’s buried streets and some of the best tour guides in the country!”

If you could take 5 minutes to vote for us, we would really appreciate it, you could also be in the running to win a fantastic prize from the British Travel Awards. Click here to make your vote count! There are plenty of reasons why we deserve your vote!

If you could spare a vote for our sister attraction Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth that would be marvellous - they've been nominated in the Best UK Leisure Attraction category.

THANK YOU - we very much appreciate your support!

 

The September Sigh of Relief!

So we're into September, the Royal Mile is back to normal and there is more than an Autumnal feel in the air.

RMKC Team celebrate record numbers in the style of Olympic champion Usain Bolt

For most tourism businesses and restaurants in Edinburgh, a collective sigh of relief is taken in the first week of September as the many festivals of August have finished and the tourists and performers have long gone home.  For us here at the Close, we're back to normal opening hours - 10am to 9pm (last tour) rather than 9am to 11pm (last tour) and we're reflecting on the August whirlwind! 

We welcomed a record number of people, exceeding our previous records for amount of tickets sold in a day and the amount of visitors on the tour in a day.  We've had some great feedback with 95% of our visitors saying they would recommend a visit to their friends or family, which is a testament to our fantastic team of tour guides, retail staff and managers.

One of our tour guides, Marc McKinnon who plays Walter King, the Foul Clenger, put it well -

"So the Fringe Festival has been and gone, and what a busy time it has been. Luckily for us Foul Clengers, we are used to treading through thousands of bodies each day, so it was just another day at work!

Although a completely hectic time of year, both for tourists and attractions alike, it has been so much fun to see all the staff come together and work long hours and deliver some brilliant results on tour - to the masses - daily.

Extending our opening hours as usual allowed more people to come on tours and allows more people to experience our amazing attraction. So, when all is said and done, it has definitely been a win/win, for our tourists and for our attraction, and I feel privileged to be part of our guiding team at the Close"

The 'Hoff' and the team!

One of the highlights of August at the Close was welcoming a special guest to the Close.  Of course all of our visitors are extremely special but we welcomed the legendary David Hasselhoff and his team to the Close for a tour.  The Hoff was a treat, spent time having his photo taken with staff and was a welcome morale boost at a frantic time of year!