CairnGorm Mountain has won two highly prestigious UK Business Excellence Awards in this year’s Best Practice Forum’s Awards for the leisure, hospitality, tourism and travel industry.

In the Visitor Attraction category, CairnGorm Mountain took the top award within the category for businesses with a turnover of more than £1m and then scooped the top overall award for visitor attractions across the UK, ahead of The Eden Project, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Paignton Zoo and the York Maze.

Explained a delighted Ian Whitaker, Cairngorm Mountain’s commercial director: “The Best Practice Forum's Business Excellence Awards are awarded to UK businesses that have demonstrated their willingness to adopt or adapt best practice in all aspects of their operation – so raising their efficiency and their profitability.

“They recognise how innovative business practice can achieve outstanding success and we are absolutely delighted that CairnGorm Mountain’s commitment to its staff training programme has been recognised in this way.”

Ian Whitaker paid particular tribute to Christine Briddon, the company’s HR Manager, who, along with others, has put together a wide range of training courses, both internal and external, to cater for the needs of the visitor attraction’s 67 permanent and 36 seasonal staff, as a result of which CairnGorm Mountain has become an accredited training centre, offering course to others.

In explaining the company’s training philosophy, Christine Briddon commented: “Over the past few years, we have changed the entire culture of the company and introduced schemes that have encouraged our staff to improve their skills to provide a better customer service.

“Because of the diverse nature of our business, and its degree of seasonality, we have had to introduce courses covering a wide range of subjects, including railway operational safety, catering management and service, food preparation, bar training, and lift and tow maintenance. We even introduced a ski-tuning course last year course to ensure that our skier visitors get the best out of their visit to CairnGorm!”

Within the same category of Attractions – but with a turnover of less than £1m – Jacobite Experience of Loch Ness won a Highly Commended award for its staff development programme which used leading-edge personal development techniques and one-to-one team coaching.