Southern Chinese get in on snow action, fueled by Olympics success

Resorts built in warmer provinces enable more young people to try winter sports

The 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games have fueled a craze for ice and snow activities in China, with ski resorts in the country's warmer provinces reporting increases in visitor numbers, according to industry figures and reports.

A report released by online travel agency Ctrip on Feb 6 showed that ticket sales of tourist attractions featuring ice or snow increased by nearly 40 percent year-on-year during the first six days of the weeklong Spring Festival holiday, which began on Jan 31.

According to a report on China's ice-snow tourism released by the China Tourism Academy on Jan 5,68.4 percent of the respondents to a survey said they were "highly certain" that they would increase their visits to ice-snow tourist destinations because of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

"The Beijing Winter Games have kindled people's enthusiasm for ice and snow sports. Many people came here just to have a try at skiing," Wu Junge, deputy general manager of the Dabie Mountain Ski Resort in the eastern province of Anhui, told Xinhua News Agency.

Target group

Young people in China, particularly those born in or after 1995, have been major spenders.

Data from online travel agency Qunar, as cited by Chinese tech news platform Huxiu, indicated that more than 32 percent of the consumers who paid to take part in activities involving ice and snow during the 2021-22 winter season were born in 1995 or later.

Ming Yu, a 24-year-old from Beijing, told Huxiu that she skied three times during the Spring Festival holiday.

Ski resorts and nearby hotels around Beijing, according to Ming, have been making efforts to win over young consumers in the last three years. These include introducing winter sports that appeal to the young, hosting live action murder mystery games and offering healthy snacks.

The post-1995 generation, a worker at an ice-snow resort in Beijing said to Huxiu, "are looking beyond recreational ice and snow activities". They are showing greater willingness to hire personal trainers or to experience winter sports for professionals, he added.

"The Beijing Winter Olympics may make the current generation of young people fall in love with ice and snow sports," Huxiu quoted Liu Bin, a stock analyst, as saying.

"The popularity of skiing in Hokkaido today is closely related to the (1972) Sapporo Winter Olympics. More young people began to show an interest in ice and snow sports and traveled to Sapporo," Liu said.

Emerging markets

The icy fun is no longer exclusive to people in China's colder northern provinces. An increasing number of indoor winter sports venues and outdoor alpine ski resorts have been built in its warmer south, which refers to regions south of the Qinling Mountains and Huaihe River. This is partly down to a nationwide campaign to promote winter sports in warmer provinces, putting the "white economy" in the south on a fast track.

"I used to go skiing in Northeast China or Xinjiang every year," a skiing enthusiast surnamed Wu, from the southwestern city of Chengdu, told Beijing-based China Sports Daily. "The indoor and outdoor ski venues built in Chengdu in recent years enable us to ski in our home city and on a much more frequent basis."

Guangdong, one of China's warmest provinces, was home to 20 indoor skating rinks as of the end of 2020, the newspaper reported.

Among the 10 ski resorts with the highest sales in 2021, based on data from Qunar, five are in southern regions. They include the Meihua Mountain International Ski Resort in Liupanshui, Guizhou province and the Daming Mountain Ski Resort in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, the Guangdong-based Southern Metropolis Daily reported in January.

Ticket sales of the Meihua Mountain International Ski Resort had more than doubled compared with the previous ice and snow season, and that of the Daming Mountain Ski Resort saw a surge of nearly 80 percent year-on-year, the report said.

According to the Sichuan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, the local Xiling Snow Mountain scenic area received 76,500 visits during the Spring Festival holiday, up 41.31 percent compared with 2021's figure.

The popularity of skiing has also boosted sales of ski and snowboarding gear in South China. A staff member at a snowboarding shop in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, told the Beijing-based Economic Observer newspaper that their sales since the beginning of this year were much higher than the same period last year.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of trips to ice-snow tourist destinations in China increased from 170 million in the 2016-17 ice-snow season to 254 million in 2020-21, according to the report by the China Tourism Academy.

The figure is expected to reach 305 million in the 2021-22 season and the revenue generated will likely top 323 billion yuan ($51 billion), the report said.