TV presenter Roberts to host Tourism Awards
HE is one of the UK’s most respected property, travel and lifestyle TV presenters and journalists.
Now Martin Roberts has been unveiled as the host for the inaugural West Midlands Tourism Awards.
The ceremony will take place on February 26 at the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall.
Forty-three of the region’s most impressive attractions and businesses have been shortlisted for the prestigious awards, supported by West Midlands Growth Company.
The region hosted 131 million visitors in 2018 – a 2.6 per cent increase on the previous year – and they contributed £12.6 billion to the region’s economy, a rise of 6.7 per cent.
And with Coventry set to celebrate the UK Capital of Culture in 2021 and Birmingham hosting the 2022 Commonwealth Games, numbers are expected to increase.
Mr Roberts will be
helping
to unveil 15 winners across the hotlycontested categories at the ceremony, including a sustainable tourism award and large visitor attraction of the year.
Currently presenter of BBC’s Homes Under the Hammer, he has travelled to the West Midlands since his schooldays and revealed a treasured romantic memory from his teenage years.
Roberts, who was brought up in Warrington, attended several school trips to some of the West Midlands’ best loved tourist attractions, including Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick Castle.
And it is one trip to Warwick Castle, in particular, that he remembers fondly.
“We used to visit Stratford-uponAvon – that was an important part of the school curriculum,” he says. “We also used to visit Warwick Castle.
“It was on a school trip to the castle that I had my first kiss!
“It was on the back of a bus, I must have been about 13 years old. Such romantic stuff!
“But what a fantastic transformation there has been in Birmingham over the last ten years. You wouldn’t recognise the place.
“There has been a lot of regeneration across the city centre. Now, the city is home to world-class facilities and buildings.”
Roberts has a lot of expertise in tourism. Prior to Homes Under the Hammer and a stint on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2016, he was a presenter on ITV’s top-rated travel show Wish You Were Here for eight years and the travel editor of Woman magazine for 15 years.
And he is pleased to recommend the West Midlands as a place to visit.
“We’ve spent lots of time filming Homes Under the Hammer in the West Midlands,” he says. “I must have visited a couple of hundred times over the past 17 years.
“Every time I visit, it’s always struck me how the West Midlands is the heart of Britain in so many different ways. It is home to so many hard-working people who help each other out.
“It has a great attitude with a proud heritage as being the industrial heart of the UK. People go out of their way to make people welcome.”
As well as working in TV and radio, the presenter is proud to represent his charity, the Martin Roberts Foundation, which is about safeguarding mental health for children.
The charity is due to deliver its book to Birmingham schoolchildren in Year 4 during 2020.
Buy tickets for the West Midlands Tourism Awards 2020, and learn about sponsorship opportunities, at www.westmidlandstourismawards. com.
fantastic