CairnGorm Mountain Ltd. presented its Annual Report and Accounts today (Thursday, 8th April) for 2002/2003 and claimed its first fully operational year as having been “a successful year”. Thanks to its success in attracting large numbers of non-skiing visitors and transforming the area into a year-round visitor destination, the operating company performed much better, reducing its losses by 33% on the previous year. However, because it continues to depend to a considerable extent on the highly variable snow conditions, the company still posted a year-end loss of £1.2m, compared to a loss in the previous year of £1.8m.,
“The accelerated climate change globally, continuing financial penalties from its delayed opening and start up costs in the first year have all been contributory factors”, said Bob Kinnaird, the company’s Chief Executive, “But, on the positive side, increased efficiencies in operation and the successful establishment of a diversification strategy have been major elements in demonstrating an improvement in the overall financial position. A change in company culture from being a traditional ski area to a commercially astute, high quality, value driven, hospitality business has enabled us to re-position ourselves and the entire community within Badenoch and Strathspey has benefited from the increased visitor spend overall.”
In commenting on the effects of global climatic change on the volume of snowsports visitors, Mr Kinnaird pointed out that it was no longer acceptable to approach each winter on the basis of speculative trading but made a strong commitment to offer the opportunity to be able to ski at CairnGorm Mountain in the future. “It would be our intention to offer the opportunity to ski here,” he said, ”but this is only going to achievable with continuing support from our major stakeholders, namely the Bank of Scotland, HIE and The Highland Council. We require to maximize the visitor attraction benefits and to minimise the current dependence on snow cover.”
Having already been awarded the Gold Standard for Environmental Tourism and achieved recognition from the Moffat Institute as the third most popular tourism attraction in The Highlands, CairnGorm Mountain’s diversification policy clearly works, to the extent that it has recently achieved “icon status” within the new Cairngorms National Park. And that diversification continues to develop with new projects such as the CairnGorm Mountain Garden, and the Cairngorms Art Initiative already to hand, and with a possible Scottish Snowsports Museum on the horizon.
Looking at the current financial year - against, somewhat ironically, a backdrop of fresh snow at CairnGorm Mountain for the Easter visitors – Bob Kinnaird was confident that, despite another year of relatively poor snow cover, further significant financial improvement could be expected. Much of this/ /this was attributed to further increases in operational efficiency within the company and the continued benefits from being a year-round attraction, as well as the development of Cairngorms National Park and the impending opening of Aviemore Highland Resort.
Said Bob Kinnaird, “The challenge has been to develop a new year-round visitor attraction while coping with the two worst winters that we have had on record. As a result, we have had to rapidly re-engineer the business as we can no longer rely on increasingly unpredictable winters. Our trading position is much stronger this year and we expect, at the very least, to break even during 2004/2005. Most importantly, we remain firmly committed to be offering a skiing product at CairnGorm Mountain.”
In underlining the challenge being faced, Hamish Swan, the company Chairman commented in his Annual Report for 2002/2003 that “The Board cannot ignore the trends of global climate change. The Company has been working closely with its main stakeholders, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, Moray, Badenoch & Strathspey Enterprise, the Bank of Scotland, and The Highland Council to find a reduced winter risk formula that seeks to produce a sustainable profit performance. The objective is to remove, or at least significantly reduce, the dependence on the vagaries of snow cover.”
However, he too was optimistic for the future when he concluded by saying: “These short term challenges can be overcome to enable the CairnGorm Mountain to deliver a sustainable financial performance for the benefit of the community, in terms of economic, social and environmental results”.
In its first full year of operation, the numbers of visitors who came to CairnGorm for reasons other than snow sports substantially exceeded forecast with more than 180,000 non-skiing visitors being recorded. However, because of poor snow conditions, the hoped-for numbers of around 100,000 winter sports visitors (based on the 5 year rolling average), was unattainable with only 45,000 skiing visitors, albeit that this was almost one-third of the 150,000 skier days reported by the Scottish Ski industry for the 2002/2003 season.
Ends
Further information from
BOB KINNAIRD
Tel: 01479 861306
or
BILL NOLAN
Tel. 07885 071804
|
