Last month, alpine tourism specialist Laurent Vanat, released his 16th annual International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism.

We look at 8 takeaways from the report. Full access is limited to crowdfunding supporters or copies can be purchased online.

Winter 2022/23 was a ‘very average’ season

Total skier numbers for the 2022/23 winter season were 372m – very typical of the twenty year average (excluding Covid).  

The market is static in Europe and North America

These two large markets are mature and show little growth or decline.

The Asia and Pacific market is deceptive

The last twenty years has seen a large decline in the number of Japanese skiers, which has yet to be offset by the sharp increase in skiers in China.

The USA, Italy and China had record seasons

While Germany and Japan are in decline, compared with their five-year pre-Covid average, the United States, Italy and Japan all saw record numbers of skiers in 2022/23 with big increases.

China already has more ‘skiers’ than the USA

More people in China have tried skiing than in the USA. However, only a small number of those ‘skiers’ took to the slopes in winter 2022/23. It seems that many of them have tried skier and decided it’s not for them.

Possibly, some of these ‘skiers’ tried on indoor slopes and are not included in the data. If you’d like to know more about skiing in China, please listen to Episode 210 of The Ski Podcast, when Iain spoke with Justin Downes, a specialist in the Chinese ski market.

China is no longer importing ski lifts

Vanat’s report suggests that while China used to rely on importing ski lifts manufactured elsewhere in the world, they now produce all their lifts domestically.

Multi-resort ski passes are more popular than ever

The 2022/23 season was the first time that 50% of all US skier visits came from season passes (in this case the Epic Pass and Ikon Pass).

To find out more about Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass and the company’s European acquisitions, listen to Episode 204 of The Ski Podcast, where Iain spoke with Andermatt CEO, Mike Goar:

Dynamic pricing of lift tickets is more popular than ever

Over half of lift tickets sold in Switzerland in 2022/23 were sold using dynamic pricing:

Secure your copy of the report

The report was launched at Mountain Planet, an industry networking event that took place in Grenoble, France.

Full access to the report is limited to crowdfunding supporters or copies can be purchased online.