Christoph Schrahe

Christoph Schrahe first studied geography, cartography and town planning as well as cultural technology and geology at Bonn University from 1988 and graduated with a business degree (DH) from University of Applied Sciences Baden-Württemberg which he attended from 1991. While still at college, visits to ski resorts took him around the world. He subsequently worked at a Swedish skiing resort and was then employed by Aktiv Reisen velotours in Konstanz, a cycling tour operator. From 1996, he worked as product manager in the navigation software department at Bosch in Hildesheim. In 1999, he joined ift Freizeit- und Tourismusberatung in Cologne as senior consultant where he was in charge of numerous projects developing regional tourism products amongst which were master plans for the development of ski resorts for the ministries of economy of the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. These included feasibility studies, project development, assessment of economic benefits and assessing the requirements for snowmaking based on local climate and its variations. His initiative kick-started the establishment of Masterplan Wintersportarena Sauerland, leading to investments into the local ski resorts totaling more than 100 Million Euros since the year 2000.

In 2008 he became self employed and founded his own consulting company Montenius Consult. Montenius Consult has been working on numerous ski area development projects in Germany but also in Austria, Turkey and Pakistan.

Further to this, Christoph Schrahe developed the simulation programme SnowPlan in cooperation with Eidgenössisches Schnee- und Lawinenforschungsinstitut (Suisse Snow and Avalanche Research Institute – SLF) in Davos which is a planning aid for designing snowmaking systems.

Christoph Schrahe has been a guest lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Baden-Württemberg in Ravensburg on Ski Resort Management and has also lectured at the International School of Management in Dortmund. His speaking engagements on the subject of winter sports tourism took him as far as north-east China, to the booming ski region of Heilongjiang, as part of a UN-project. He was a keynote speaker at the World Winter Forum in Vienna and is a regular at the Deutsches Seminar für Tourismus.

Furthermore, Christoph Schrahe is one of the best-known German authors on winter sports. He has travelled to and reported about more than 450 skiing areas in 36 countries on six continents. Apart from the travel guides Ski Weltweit (published in 1994) and Vista Point Ski Guide Nordamerika (2005, 2007, 2010, 2013), he has published numerous articles in leading German and international (USA, England, Austria, Switzerland and Hungary) magazines and newspapers such as Ski Area Management, Daily Mail Ski Magazine, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Mountain News, Ski & Board magazine, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hamburger Abendblatt, Stern, ADAC-Reisemagazin, mobil and Lufthansa Magazin. He wrote regularly for DSV Ski-Atlas and the ADAC Ski Guide and has also reported on winter sports resorts worldwide on radio and television (ARD, WDR, ZDF, SWR, Deutschlandradio etc.).

Christoph Schrahe is a certified ski instructor.

In January 2013 Christoph Schrahe revealed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper that many ski resorts advertise themselves by claiming more piste kilometres than they actually have, the story went ‘viral’ and struck a chord with ski publications in many countries. Since then his name stands for competence in measuring piste length.