DKB Indoor Skiing / PR
what is it about?
The "LOTTO (former DKB) Skisporthalle Oberhof" is Europe's first indoor cross-country skiing and biathlon facility, where ski sports can be performed all year round. It was built in 2009 to support and improve training quality for professional athletes. Thanks to the new training facility, residential athletes can train on snow all year round, which turned out to be a competitive advantage and consequently caught the attention of international sports teams who travel to Oberhof to execute training camps. Soon after the complex celebrated its opening it became clear that the maintenance costs would exceed the returns, which forced the owners to rethink the concept. The facility was therefore opened to tourists which then revealed the actual customer value in terms of entertainment, team building and product tests.
What did I do?
This massive project caught my interest, as I was living very close to Oberhof these days and as I had a personal connection to winter sports due to my grandpa who was a successful ski jumper. As a dancer, I usually got to know the athletes' perspective, but here I had a chance to experience the business side of the sports industry as well as to gain some experiences in Marketing and PR. In my 2-months internship at Oberhof Sportstätten GmbH , (who managed the facility at this point in time) I had the chance to work side-by-side with the Sales-and-Marketing-Manager. I was responsible for the creation and supervision of editorials, but also the set-up of our social media channels 'from time to time I was allowed to take part in management and partnership meetings as a learning observer. At the. end. of my internship, I even negotiated a deal with Technical University Munich to execute our yearly ski training camp at this facility. This provided us not only with better planning opportunities (reliable snow conditions) but also enabled us to apply our sport scientific knowledge based on the diagnostic tools that were installed within the facility (video analysis, heart rate measurement, lactate etc.).
