Each winter for the past three years, Claire Zhou, a teenager from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has counted down the days until she can fly to northern China and pull on a new ski suit and boots.
The better she skis, the more frequently she upgrades her gear, reshaping her family’s holiday budget and pulling them deeper into China’s fast-growing winter sports consumption chain.
The country’s winter sports boom, sparked by the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and fuelled by supportive policies, has accelerated nationwide. Amid sluggish consumption nationwide, the ice and snow economy has emerged as one of the few segments consistently defying the broader downturn.
The Zhou family used to travel to Southeast Asia during winter breaks, but it has headed to northern provinces such as Jilin and Liaoning since 2022.
“Skiwear and travel costs are definitely higher than trips to Southeast Asia,” said Claire’s mother, Monica He. “While our daughter trained daily with her coach, we enjoyed leisure time locally. Last year we spent nearly 20,000 yuan (US$2,812) in Shenyang, and this year she most wants to go to the Altay Ski Resort in Xinjiang.”
Young consumers born in the 2000s and 2010s have become the fastest-growing demographic in the winter sports market, often influencing their families’ holiday spending decisions.
An iiMedia Research report on the winter sports industry’s prospects for this coming winter said the market was worth just under 1.05 trillion yuan (US$147.7 billion) in 2024, and could surpass 1.5 trillion yuan by 2029.
