Northeast Portugal’s historic Vidago Palace golf resort has been honoured with a top environment award in the annual IAGTO Awards, which salute the best in the global golf tourism industry.

The GEO Certified resort, which opened in 1910 and was refurbished on its 100th anniversary, won the Community Integration category in the second IAGTO Sustainability Awards, announced as part of the 2015 IAGTO Awards held at Villa Erba, on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como.

Environmental and social excellence are recognised in the Sustainability Awards, which are the result of a partnership between the International Association of Golf Tour Operators (IAGTO)

According to the citation from GEO, Vidago Palace won the Community Engagement award thanks to an underlying philosophy of providing opportunities and building relationships to benefit local people and businesses in their shared community.

GEO’s citation went on: “The resort strongly recognises that its success has a dependency on quality environments, cultural uniqueness, social interaction, security and well-being, to maintain its status as a valuable community asset. This is clear in the number of educational, community relations, outreach and environmental advocacy activities happening throughout.”

Vidago Palace’s Golf Director, Alexandre Barroso, said: “It is a truly an honour to receive this award. Receiving the Community Engagement Award reinforces the good work that the team does integrating the community in the project, by involving other hotels and restaurants, by employing 140 people mainly from the community, by buying locally the majority of the products consumed, and it will give them more strength to maintain their passion in what they do.”

Barroso continued: “I want to thank all my team who have been involved during the GEO certification process for the great job they have done. I would also like to thank IAGTO for the work it has done in getting all the golf industry together and to GEO for helping all of us to have the best guidelines for maintaining our golf courses using the best practices for the environment.”

Vidago Palace has been part of Portuguese beverage company UNICER, owner of Portugal’s Super Bock beer brand, since 2002. Barosso said the company had decided to refurbish the iconic property to preserve its magnificent heritage, which he added was not only a “huge project for the region” but that since then, Vidago Palace had helped drive the development of tourism to the north east of Portugal.

Today, Vidago Palace offers a luxury hotel – a Leading Hotels of the World member – with 70 rooms and suites, a spa with 20 treatment rooms, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a conference centre and a Championship golf course where the Portugal Senior Open was recently played.