Fosun, a Chinese conglomerate which now owns former British company Thomas Cook as well as the originally French run Club Med and the Canadian Cirque du Soleil, and which has recently opened several Club Med ski areas in China, says it plans to open a new Club Med in Japan next winter in a bid to meet surging demand.
Fosun has bought the Tomamu ski resort on Japan famous northerly island of Hokkaido, famous for its powder snow, for £93m and is converting it in to Club Med’s fourth ski resort in the region.
Club Med first opened in Yabuli in North eastern China nearly a decade ago, but before the growth in the Chinese ski industry its first Asian ski resort was actually established last century at Sahhoro, also on Hokkaido in Japan.
Japan’s National Tourism Organisation say the country received more than 10 million foreign visitors in the first five months of this year, a record number, with around a quarter of these arriving from China, a 45 per cent increase on a year ago.
Fosun say they intend to ‘globalise’ and become a global leader in the travel sector. It has opened four new Club Med resorts in China since buying the company in 2011 and has 15 more due to open before 2020 as well as a planned new ski area in South Korea. Worldwide it has 66 resorts, 23 of which are ski resorts.
