Snow the foundation for business boom
In the countdown to the start of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on Feb 4, ice and snow tourism has picked up among Chinese.
The Games are also expected to fuel more opportunities for businesses in related fields. With the new snow season beginning in China, enthusiastic skiers and snowboarders have been eager to get back on the slopes.
Beijing and Zhangjiakou in Hebei province have established a group of venues to provide services for the Winter Games, including the BeijingZhangjiakou high-speed railway. Over the long term, that infrastructure is expected to become additional assets for the country’s tourism based on ice and snow.
The ski venues in Zhangjiakou, about 124 miles northwest of Beijing, will host the snow sports events of the Winter Games. In the past few years, the popularity of the ski resorts there has grown, although a few will be closed for the Games.
A number of landmark Winter Games venues were designed with the idea of continuing to drive tourism after the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“Those venues are expected to become new hot spots after the Games,” said Cheng Chaogong, chief researcher with the tourism research institute of online travel agency Tongcheng-eLong in Suzhou.
“Apart from traditional sports such as ice-skating and skiing, more innovative entertainment is expected to emerge and create new experiences for consumers.”
The Winter Games events that tend to draw the greatest public interest include short track speed skating, speed skating, freestyle skiing, snowboarding and curling, experts said.
Ice and snow sports have become increasingly popular, and many people also like to take part in activities such as skipping rope in the snow, snow bowling and playing football in a field of snow.
Most of China’s ice and snow tourism occurs in Northeast China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Xinjiang Uygur and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions. In addition to ski resorts, those regions also have attractions such as ice sculpting, ice fishing and ethnic cultures, Tongcheng-e Long said.
In December, bookings at some ski resort hotels in Jilin province exceeded those of the same period of 2019, before the pandemic, according to Qunar, a Beijing-based online travel agency.
Winter sports also have become more popular among residents of South China. More cities there have built indoor ski slopes with machine-made snow. By the end of 2020, 36 indoor ski resorts have been built in China, and Sunac Snow Park in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, has become the most popular, Qunar said.
All this has fueled the business of skiing equipment makers. A set of equipment for skiing, including a suit, costs about 3,000 to 10,000 yuan ($470 to $1,600) for average skiers. For professional and serious skiers, a whole set could run to 60,000 yuan or more, and limited edition equipment can be even more expensive, according to Beijing-based think tank Equal Ocean.
High prices for skiing-related merchandise have boosted the profitability of retailers. Retail profit margins for snowboard and ski suit retailers are usually 40% to 50%, and the margins for helmets and goggles can reach 70%.
For ski resorts, the profit margin is usually about 15%, with ski instruction offering margins of 30% to 35%, according to enterprise intelligence and management information company MobTech.
“In China most skiers are mid- to high-income male consumers who live in first-tier and second-tier cities,” MobTech said. “Most are aged between 25 and 34, and their monthly income is above 10,000 yuan.”
In China only 1% of the population has caught the skiing bug, far lower than the 35% in Switzerland, 9% in Japan and 8% in the United States. That indicates that the sector has significant room for further growth, according to the China Ski Industry Development Report produced by Carving Ski Group.