Telegraph Travel Awards 2013: Best ski operator Runners-up: Inghams, Neilson The key to Mark Warner's success is offering winter activity holidays to like-minded people in well-located, comfortable accommodation with enthusiastic staff. Founded as a ski holiday company in 1974 with one chalet in Verbier, the company has since expanded its winter programme into eight premier, snowsure resorts such as Val d'Isere, Courchevel and St Anton. Its chalet holiday concept involves offering increased levels of service and comfort in larger chalet hotels and it now offers 11 chalet hotels and one chalet. Mark Warner has a history of innovation - it was the first company to introduce ski hosting in the 1970s, it opened it's first chalet hotel in 1979 and it expanded further its appeal to families by introducing a Kids Club programme in 1986. The company has evolved a successful formula that is clearly working; it now carries over 50,000 passengers a year on a mix of its ski and beach holidays. Inghams, one of the runners-up, has grown into one of Britain's leading specialist tour operators from a modest beginning 79 years ago when its founder, Walter Inghams, advertised for people to join him on a private ski party to Austria. The company now sends people to more than 80 ski resorts across 10 countries in Europe and North America offering a variety of chalet and hotel accommodation. Inghams prides itself on being run "by skiers, for skiers" and for the coming 2013/2014 ski season, it has expanded its popular Lapland programme.