Alexandria's Wee Play Place wins award in Scottish Hospitality Awards

Julie Thomas said she and her team were stunned after the Wee Play Place was announced as the winner at the recent ceremony at the Marriott Hotel in Glasgow.

After opening the business on Bridge Street just over four years ago Julie explained that the local community’s support has been “overwhelming”.

She said: “We got an email through to say that we had been selected as a finalist and my understanding is that somebody else has to nominate you, so I don’t know who nominated us.

“Then we had to send in some supporting evidence for it and the rest is unknown to me. It’s lovely that our customers feel that way about us, it’s quite overwhelming to be honest because you don’t expect it.”

Like many other soft play businesses the Wee Play Place was forced to close for 15 months during the Covid pandemic.

Delighted staff at The Wee Play Place in Alexandria won the Best Entertainment Team prize at the Scottish Hospitality Awards

Julie said that this was a difficult period and that the business only just survived as at one point it didn’t look like it would be financially feasible to reopen.

Julie added: “I think for a lot of soft plays in Scotland it was very touch and go. I think we were one of the sectors that was closed for the longest period of time with the exception of night clubs.

“There were points where it didn’t look feasible that financially we were going to be able to reopen. Re-opening again was like starting the business again because we had been away for such a long time.

“People have changed, their perceptions have changed because of Covid so there was always that risk that people weren’t going to come back and thankfully they did.”

The soft play facility

Julie said that the businesses success post-lockdown is “testament” to her teams hard work day in day out to keep “standards really high”.

She said: “I don’t think it has sunk in yet and we weren’t expecting it. I had said to the staff we’ll go along and we’ll have a night out and just enjoy the night so when we actually won it was unbelievable.