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Finalists announced for the 2009 CountryLink Inland Tourism Awards

President, Tracey Valensizi today congratulated the finalists of the 2009 CountryLink Inland Tourism Awards and said ‘The 58 finalists over the four inland tourism regions demonstrated a high standard of professionalism and innovation in their field.”

“This year the awards received a 27% increase in entries from the previous year” Tracey said “of the entrants 58 finalists were selected in 18 categories including Tourism Wineries and Boutique Breweries, Heritage and Tourism, New Tourism Development, Tourism Marketing and many more.”

“For the first time this year, two new categories of Inland Stellar Award and the Inland Champion Award were announced and we were pleased to see a diverse range of entrants who reflected the passion our communities have for their town, region and the tourism industry” Tracey said “I look forward to watching the winners as they are revealed at the gala presentation dinner being held in Narrabri at the Crossing Theatre on Saturday 25^th July”

Last year many winners from the 2008 CountryLink Inland Tourism Awards gained finalist status at the State NSW Tourism Awards and of these, 5 Winners were awarded with an additional 4 Silver and 3 Bronze Awards.

We would also like to acknowledge our sponsors, without whom the awards would not be possible:

CountryLink

Narrabri Shire Council

Macquarie Southern Cross Media

New England North West Tourism

Central NSW Tourism

Riverina Tourism

Outback Tourism

Fairfax Media

CSIRO

Datatrax

Tourism Industry Council of NSW

Tourism NSW

Department of State and Regional Development

Fosters Group

Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre; and

Cartoscope Maps

Click the links below to download the list of finalists by region

 Finalists in Central NSW

Finalists in New England North West

Finalists in Outback Tourism

Finalists in Riverina Tourism