CBN Friday Special丨Winter sports heat up in China as ice and snow economy thrive（Snow Road）

With falling temperatures and more snow expected in December, peak season has come for winter tourism in some Chinese cities.

This winter, or the first skiing season after China optimized its COVID-19 response measures, the ice and snow-related Tourism sector in China is poised for strong growth.

Since November, with dropping temperatures, online searches for skiing-related products on online travel agency Qunar have jumped three times over October. Meanwhile, the booking volumes of admission tickets to skiing resorts nationwide have surged nearly 150 percent over the same period of 2019, or before the pandemic, Qunar found.

The 2023 skiing Trip Trend Report, recently released by an online travel platform, shows that the popularity of skiing-related searches increased by 120 percent in the first week of November. The booking volume of skiing tickets and related products rose by more than 100 percent monthly.

Amid unusually warm temperatures, the ski season in northern China is sliding into gear a week later than usual this year. But with the first cold wave finally descending, reducing temperatures by six to 10 degrees Celsius, resorts have signaled the start of a delayed yet anticipated winter sports season.

As the new skiing season gets ready to commence, skiers and snowboarders are eager to hit the slopes again. Interest in skiing has soared on social media, with online searches quadrupling over the past month and peaking during the Double Eleven shopping festival. On Weibo, a hashtag related to skiing saw a spike in engagement, amassing over 2.47 billion views.

The spike in winter sports enthusiasm stems from Beijing’s successful bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics in 2015, which set out to engage 300 million people in ice and snow activities, further boosting local economies and release their development vitality.

Hotel reservations in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, where the skiing events of the Beijing Winter Olympics were held, have skyrocketed nearly 10 times year-on-year. According to data from a leading e-commerce platform for services, from Nov. 1 to 9, the revenue of Group buying skiing tickets grew by 209 percent compared to the same period in 2019.

Travel agencies are capitalizing on the renewed interest in winter sports by offering ski-related tour packages in northern China, particularly in the provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin. With Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, receiving heavy snowfall in recent weeks, ski resorts in the region have reported an uptick since opening their slopes on Nov. 9.

Thriving ice-and-snow tourism

It is expected that China's ice and snow leisure sites will receive over 520 million visits, with its revenue exceeding 720 billion yuan, during the 2024-25 ice and snow season, according to a report released by the China Tourism Academy.

The industry predicts that the 2023-24 snow season will substantially promote the recovery of the domestic ski market. By 2025, the total output value of China's ice- and snow-related sector is forecast to hit 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion), accounting for one-fifth of the total output value of China's sports industry. This year, the figure is expected to reach 890 billion yuan, according to a report released by the Asia Data Group in September.

From research by an online travel platform academy, in addition to first and second-tier cities, more tourists from third- and fourth-tier cities have also joined ski groups.

China's per capita GDP reached $11,300 in 2020. Studies indicate that the sports industry grows significantly when a country's per capita GDP exceeds $8,000, while the ice and snow industry tends to flourish when it is over $10,000. China has ushered in a golden era for the prosperity of winter sports.

The most significant legacy of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games has been the successful efforts to engage more than 300 million people in China in snow and ice activities. This has expanded participation from certain local hotspots to nationwide, from winter to all four seasons, and shifted ice-snow activities like skiing from a niche sport to a popular daily routine.

Riding the ice and snow sports trend, multiple regions have unveiled ambitious plans to boost local tourism through the development of winter sports facilities. Specifically, the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has vowed to construct over 100 ski resorts and elevate the standard of existing ones, aiming to raise its tally of 5A-level resorts from five to eight by 2025.

Jilin, a province renowned for its ski facilities with 75 resorts and 319 trails, is also expected to expand its ice and snow industry to a scale of 500 billion yuan by 2025. In line with this goal, the provincial government has committed in an action plan, announced in October, to allocate an annual investment of 100 million yuan to bolster growth in this sector.

The ice and snow tourism market has seen a significant number of business opportunities, thanks to a long industrial chain that includes snow-making equipment manufacturing, sporting apparel and skills training for skiing-related activities.

In 2016, the country issued a guideline to accelerate the construction of ice and snow facilities, as part of efforts to popularize relevant sports and promote the development of relevant industries.

From 2016 to 2022, China invested about 2.88 trillion yuan in its infrastructure projects for ice and snow tourism. As of the end of 2022, nearly 9,000 relevant enterprises had registered in the ice and snow sector. In 2022 alone, 1,460 were newly added, up 20.1 percent year on year.

The local governments of 26 provinces in China have also issued favorable policies to promote the development of ice and snow sports and related sectors, which are expected to further boost the sector.

This winter, the skiing association of Sichuan province in Southwest China plans to organize various events to promote skiing among the local residents. These activities include different types of skiing competitions, indoor and outdoor training for skiing, as well as development of the cultural and tourism market.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, Sichuan hopes to build itself into a competitive region for ice and snow sports in South China. It aims to drive more than 10 million local residents to participate in ice and snow sports annually, to take the output value of the sector to more than 30 billion yuan, the local government said.

In Jilin Province, a pilot zone featuring high-quality development of the ice and snow economy was set up in 2021, promoting the integration of winter sports and other local tourism resources including hiking trails in mountains, fruit picking gardens and seas of flowers.

In Shanghai, an indoor ski resort covering over 90,000 square meters will start operation in the first half of 2024, while in south China's metropolis of Shenzhen, a tourism project with an "ice and snow world" theme and with an investment of over 29.6 billion yuan, will be put into use in November 2025.

Going global

Despite facing challenges such as inadequate supporting facilities and insufficient diversity of winter sports, Northeast China is firmly seizing the opportunity to expand the layout of the ice-and-snow economy and aims to target the global market.

Jilin has proposed the "Ice and Snow Silk Road" plan. "The plan serves as a platform to build international cooperation in the field of ice and snow and further expand the international influence of Jilin," said Jin Zhenlin, deputy director of the department of culture and tourism of Jilin province.

Heilongjiang has made it clear that by 2025, it plans to construct several national and provincial-level ski resorts and winter tourism destinations, as well as cultivate several internationally competitive ice-and-snow enterprises and related well-known brands.

In addition, there's a solid foundation for Northeast China's ice-and-snow industry to go global. Vasaloppet China, an annual long-distance cross-country skiing race originating in Sweden over a hundred years ago, has been held in Changchun, the provincial capital of Jilin, for 21 years.

The competition attracts athletes from China and overseas and has provided free cross-country skiing training for over 1 million university students.

In September, some 500 companies from over 20 countries participated in the World Winter Sports (Beijing) Expo held at Shougang Park, where the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics venue Big Air Shougang is located.

The countries that took part included Austria, Italy, Finland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Local companies showcased their latest technologies, products and services related to skiing at the expo.

Liu Jingmin, executive vice-chairman of the Beijing Olympic City Development Association, said ever since the first winter expo was held in 2016, the event has helped promote the development of China's winter sports industry and international exchanges.

Meanwhile, the New Zealand Tourism Board has organized various kinds of skiing promotional events to attract more travelers this year. Currently, the country mainly attracts tourists from Australia, the United States and China.

Since China optimized its COVID-19 response measures, the number of Chinese visitors who have visited New Zealand has grown rapidly.

In July — the winter season in New Zealand — more than 6,400 Chinese visitors stayed for at least 22 days in the country, making up over 40 percent of the total number of Chinese who arrived in the country that month. Some Chinese visitors stayed for eight to 14 days.

Besides, the number of Chinese visitors aged below 15 who arrived in New Zealand in July exceeded 3,800, accounting for 24 percent of the total, becoming the largest age group of visitors, according to the New Zealand Tourism Board.

Italian snow-making equipment company TechnoAlpin, which provides equipment to 90 percent of large-scale ski resorts in China, said it is confident about potential tourists who are expected to go skiing this winter in China.

The passenger flows at indoor ski resorts in China have also been significant, and the company said it plans to increase its investments in China. The country currently makes up about 10 percent of its global business.