rocksresort is a complex owned and operated by the White Arena Group, located right next to the skilift in the village of Laax in the Swiss Alps. It has a hotel and holiday apartments, playgrounds for children and young people, as well as sports facilities such as badminton, skate boarding, trampoline and slackline. The complex also offers a comprehensive range of services with shops, restaurants and bars, and is increasingly becoming a location for events. In short, rocksresort offers everything one needs for a holiday in the mountains. Combining a residential residence with sports facilities, an event location and a shopping mall, rocksresort represents the entirety of a holiday destination in a microcosm of approximately two hundred metres. Nine networked contexts for the guest form Deep-Connect value, starting with the guest and including more and more communities, as shown in the graphic and outlined below.

1. Group feeling despite divergent activities: A group of guests with different preferences, whether family or peers, can pursue their own preferences and still stay connected because they are in the same place. The guests enjoy their own activities more, because they know that they are part of a travel group, while the others in the group follow their preferences and are just around the corner; due to the physical proximity the group feeling of joint activities is preserved.

2. Low-emission holiday: For the duration of the holiday stay at the rocksresort, the guest can partially or completely do without a motorised vehicle. Many holiday activities are immediately available in the complex or can be easily reached by walking or the free shuttle bus in the village. 

The offers 1 and 2 are linked: From the two contexts of group feeling and environmental friendliness a further value is created, namely conscious, considered and thoughtful holidays. Value in Deep-Connect comes from guests experiencing themselves as more aware of their self, the group and the environment by organising the holiday accordingly. 

3. Aesthetic embedding in the locality: The aesthetic sense of the guest is stimulated by the value of an architecture that takes up the forms and materials of the region and reinterprets them. The architecture and design of the complex is of great value to the guest in the context of the aesthetic embedding in the area through the authentic atmosphere both in terms of the landscape and society. 

4. Low energy consumption in the buildings: rocksresort was built to optimise energy consumption and conserve resources. At the heart of the energy supply is a central woodchip-fired heating system for heat and hot water, fired by wood waste from the locale, thereby minimizing transportation costs and emissions.

In offers 3 and 4, the architectural concept of the complex links authenticity and sustainability. Together with offer 2, the contexts of activities and architecture are unified in the overall design of the complex to be sustainable, creating additional meaningful value in Deep-Connect.

5. Hotel service or self-catering in the apartment: In rocksresort there are only suites with kitchen and living room. The services of a hotel are available, or the guest can cook and clean on his own, or choose a mixture of both. In the rocksresort the apartments can be purchased, which means that the guest can become a co-owner of the holiday complex. As the owner of the holiday apartment, the guest can also choose from the same services as for the hotel guests: Living like at home with all the comforts of a hotel. Linked with offer 1, the planning and execution of the activities in rocksresort can be arranged as a whole with many alternatives that can easily be coordinated, e.g. two guests play badminton while two cook. The value created for the family or group of friends as a “Community” by linking the two contexts represents further meaningful value in Deep-Connect.

6. Events on the doorstep: rocksresort increasingly organizes events and happenings of various kinds, e.g. an outdoor market for sustainable clothes, concerts, and sports competitions. The events link with offers 1 and 5 as another context in which the holiday activities are enriched and coordinated. Furthermore, rocksresort is becoming an “in” place to be and the guest enjoys the privilege of being on-site where exciting things are happening.

7. Social community of regularly returning guests: Both owners and hotel guests visit rocksresort regularly, creating the possibility for bonding. Together with offer 1, there is a sense of an active community at rocksresort: the guest can look forward to encounters throughout the stay, which may be planned, imagined or a welcome surprise.

8. Apartment owner is a co-entrepreneur: A condition for the purchase of an apartment is participation in the novel “buy-to-use-and-let” concept. When the owner is not in the suite, it is rented out by the White Arena Group as if it were a hotel room to guests. Each owner makes the suite available for rent during a minimum number of weeks in the year. The proceeds from the rental are shared out equally amongst the owners, who thus collectively act as landlords.

Because the rocksresort is designed to be ecologically, aesthetically and economically sustainable and thus focused on value retention, the owner can consider himself an investor in an environmentally friendly and financially sound property in a future-oriented holiday resort. And this in a community with other owners, where the pooling model means that there is no competition but cooperation. Thus contexts 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 reinforce each other, creating Deep- Connect value. The owners experience themselves in a community of people with shared leisure, business and environmental interests and the same taste in architecture and interior design.

9. Promoter of regional development: The “buy-to-use-and-let” concept represents an important contribution to the business development of the White Arena Group, the rocksresort complex and the village of Laax as a touristic destination. Both owners and hotel guests can stay in the suites, raising the number of visitors during the year to the destination, from which all local businesses potentially benefit. Thus the owners gain value from contributing to the regional development of an area which they have chosen as a kind of home. The regional development in turn is supported by the attractive value in rocksresort of offers 1 – 8. In this way the owners gain value in Deep-Connect through the personal and economic connection to the entire destination.

Summing up, the meaningful value in Deep-Connect from the rocksresort complex forms a tightly interconnected structure of value generated in nine contexts. Thanks to this interconnected value rocksresort stands for a new, alpine lifestyle. In November 2017 rocksresort was awarded World’s Best Green Ski Hotel at the World Ski Awards, in November 2019 it was awarded second best. With its modern architecture and innovative concept, it generates social and aesthetic as well as ecological and economic value in the nine interconnected contexts.