Foreword
At 17:58 on July 31st, 2015, Mr. Thomas Bach, the President of International Olympic Committee（IOC）, officially announced that Beijing is the winner of 2022 Winter Olympics during the 128th Session.2015 was enshrined in the history of the Winter Olympics, and China's winter sports have taken to a whole new level in the limelight.
Time flies, looking back at the changes in China's skiing industry over the past five years, it has to be said that it is exciting. From the supply side, the number of ski resorts in China increased from 460 in 2014 to 770 in 2019, with an accumulated growth of 67.39%. The number of ski resorts equipped with the aerial lifts increased from 98 in 2014 to 155 in 2019, with a growth of 58.16%, and the number of indoor ski resorts increased from 7 in 2014 to 31 in 2019, with a growth of 342.86%. From the demand side, the number of ski visits increased from 10.30 million in 2014 to 20.90 million in 2019, with a growth of 102.91%. If the ski visits of dry ski resorts and indoor ski simulators which had developed rapidly in recent years were all taken into account, the total number of ski visits in China in 2019 had reached 22.02 million.
In early 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis, all domestic ski resorts were shut down during the Spring Festival. By July 2020, the global epidemic still faced considerable uncertainties. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics created many opportunities for China's ski industry, while the COVID-19 brought grave damage for the entire ski industry. On one hand, we should be more confident in the market forces. On the other hand, we also obtained an opportunity for calm reflection that we should be down-to-earth and step-by-step. Because of the solid foundations laid by five-year rapid growth, we are confident that the epidemic cannot change the long-term growth trend of the ski market.
This report, funded by the China Ski Industry Research Center, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research（IGSNRR）, Chinese Academy of Sciences（CAS）, has been persisting in the concept of“let the data speak”.White Paper on China's Ski Industry, published on the Internet in the past five years are the foundation of this report. Since we have researched the domestic ski industry for more than 20 years, it is a great honor for us to participate in and witness the growth of winter sports in China and the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. And we are proud to turn our years accumulation into the Report on Key Data of Ski Industry in China（2015-2019）, in order to provide a series of basic scientific data and reference for the sustainable development of China's ski industry.
Our sincere thanks to the following teams which have participated in the ski industry research over the years: Research Team of Regional Ecological Economy, IG-SNRR, CAS, Xuebang Snow Enterprise, China Mountain Development, Carving Ski, China Ski Resorts Encyclopedia, iSNOW/HUAXUEZOO, Cold Mountain, Ski+, Meituan Tickets, Mafengwo Ski, Ctrip, Peak Dry Snow, SKINOW, Winter Wonderland, Longzhixun, Gold Snowflakes Ski Industry Alliance, andso on. Meanwhile, We deliver our gratitude to ISPO Beijing: Asia Pacific Snow Conference and Mr. Laurent Vanat of Switzerland for their long-term support to this report.International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism: Overview of the Key Industry Figures for Ski Resorts, issued by Mr. Laurent Vanat every year, provided many important guidelines for this Report! We would like to express our sincere thanks to LI Xue, M.D.WEN Xueying and M.D.YE Haipeng from IGSNRR for paying hard work on report diagramming and content compilation, to Director YU Jingyi and editor GENG Yuan from Economic Press China for providing substantial support for the publication of this report. In the whole process of writing, due to the limitation of information and data, there are many inevitably omissions and deficiencies in this report. Your suggestions would be appreciated.
Finally, we would like to salute to all colleagues providing data and support for this report. Sharing creates value!
WU Bin, LI Yu, WEI Qinghua
July, 2020