The American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (AHLEI) has awarded Atmosphere Kanifushi Maldives the Certified Guest Service Property designation. To earn this distinction, the property trained employees with AHLEI's Guest Service Gold®, with 80 employees earning the Certified Guest Service Professional (CGSP®). Atmosphere Kanifushi Maldives is the first property in Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, to earn the title of Certified Guest Service Property. Tourism is the country's leading industry, so earning this designation provides the resort, which opened in December 2013, with a competitive edge. According to training manager Allen Mathias (pictured), the human resources and training team of Atmosphere Kanifushi Maldives has a vision of making Atmosphere Hotels and Resorts a learning organization. "To achieve this vision, we sought out partners to help in creating signature and unique learning opportunities for our colleagues; that would be instrumental in making them crave for learning about the hospitality industry and cascade the same down to creating delightful service," he explained. AHLEI's Guest Service Gold® and CGSP® offered the best fit for the organization. "We believe that we are in the people service business of making ourselves better human beings serving our guests. The CGSP® training helped us offer exceptional service to our guests," said Mathias. "Also, being at Maldives where there are limited hospitality training institutes for the colleagues to learn about the subject, this training and certification has given them an edge above others making them more learned and building their skill level." The training and certification was conducted in a combination of classroom and online training, which for most employees was a completely new experience, as was the concept of multiple-choice exam questions. Because of these challenges, the feeling of pride among the employees when they earned their certification was tremendous. Atmosphere Kanifushi Maldives has implemented an internal "Atmosphere Delight" program to recognize staff members who "wow" guests with exceptional service. For more information about training and professional development resources from AHLEI, visit www.ahlei.org or call 1.800.349.0299 or +1.407.999.8100.