Monitoring and summary of ideas of the Ski Club Schmallenberg e.V. for the operation of the ski lift Schmallenberger Höhe and the Handweiser Hut.

Based on the results of the area’s regional development concept, measures for the improvement of the services in the central ski area of the Sauerland were developed. These included recommendations for snowmaking systems, lift and trail quality, network, general services, catering, accommodation, traffic guidance systems, ski rental, marketing, sales and quality management. For the Ministry of Economic Affairs, SME’s, Energy and Transport the findings were a basis for the allocation of subsidies for projects that improved the quality of the ski areas in the Sauerland. The aim was to establish the Sauerland as the leading ski area in Germany's low mountain ranges until 2006. Until the season of 2005/06 visitor numbers in the regions ski areas had already climbed from 300,000 to 1,000,000.

In the course of this project Christoph Schrahe acted as editor in chief for the creation of a new winter sports portal on the World Wide Web that is supposed to include a database of 5,000 ski resorts worldwide. He defined the structure and content of the database and was responsible for recruitment and training of the staff necessary for building it up.

The ski area Sternrodt suffered from a considerable decrease of visitors in recent years. Therefore it was planned to extend the ski area and connect it with the neighbouring ski area of Willingen. For this ambitious project a concept was created in order to attract investors, as the management company was not able to finance the development out of their own resources. First contacts with potential investors were established.

In the frame of an action plan for the operation of tourist organisations run by the community of Seiffen, Christoph Schrahe delivered an operational analysis for the local ski lift. Recommendations for short-term actions included activities in the fields of communication, sales and service, in the medium and long-term it was recommended to examine the construction of a new facility.