Townsville Bulletin’s revamped Best Of awards to support local businesses
Townsville’s favourite gym, cafe, teacher or trainer will all be decided by you and celebrated like never before, in a promise to support local businesses and people.
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All of North Queensland’s favourites will be decided by you and celebrated like never before.
The Townsville Bulletin is doubling down on supporting local business through its revitalised Bully’s Best Of awards, appointing journalist Emily Devon as the masthead’s first ever Best Of editor.
Townsville Bulletin editor Jill Poulsen said the paper had a long and proud history of celebrating the best of the region and wanted to reinvigorate its current Best Of series to ensure it served both readers and businesses in equal measure.
“Emily is a natural to be our Best Of editor as a Townsville-born reporter she’s already innately proud of our region,” Poulsen said.
“Asking our readers to nominate and vote for things like best gym, coffee or teacher not only amplifies the amazing work businesses and individuals are doing in our communities it’s serves as an incredible tool for our readers to get an idea of what’s happening and available in their cities.”
As a part of the revamp winning businesses will be gifted winner decals they’ll be able to display on their windows and hold the title of Best for a full 12 months.
Devon will continue her role as the Bulletin’s chief court reporter in tandem with her new role.
Chamber of Commerce CEO Heidi Turner expressed her excitement with the make over of Best Of, as it coincided with her aim to “showcase and elevate local business and encourage people to support local”.
“As a Chamber of Commerce it’s our job to advocate, inform and support our members and so we’ve got over 400 members in the region and I think this, is for the wider public,” she said.
“It’s really exciting, there’s an opportunity for people to celebrate businesses they love and they frequent regularly and to celebrate local.
“It’s getting harder and harder to operate a business, there’s increased cost of living which decreases discretionary spend, there’s an increase in costs of operating a business so this - if you nominate a business or vote for a business, it makes them feel good and that what they’re doing is worth it.”
The CEO said the refresh also aligned with the recent announcement of the 2025 Business Awards finalists that were revealed earlier in the week.
“When we were reading out the finalists we had someone, one business, scream because they were so excited to be a finalist,” she said.
“It means so much to people because you hustle so hard in business, you do what you think is really good, you build a community and when people go ‘you’re doing really well’, just to be acknowledged - you don’t have to win but that’s why we love celebrating people with these awards.”
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Originally published as Townsville Bulletin’s revamped Best Of awards to support local businesses
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