The sixth edition of the global ski industry report International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism 2014 has been published providing an overview of key industry figures for ski resorts worldwide.
As with the previous editions, the number of countries featured in the report continues to expand and it now included data from 56 nations representing 96.4% of the global market. New this time are Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Morocco, Uzbekistan and North Korea.
There is also a new section on the world’s 40+ indoor snow centres, visitor figures from which suggest that around 17.2 million skier visits are recorded by these facilities combined each year.
The report, compiled by the highly respected consultant Laurent Vanat, has confirmed a widely believed stat from the past decade that the global ski industry records some 400 million skier visits each year.
“With this latest edition of the report and the inclusion of the snowdomes, we have an ever more detailed confirmation of this rough figure. We now exactly know how the 400 million are shared between the various countries,” said Mr Vanat.
“In the long term, the report finds that the industry is stable and even declining in some of the traditions ski countries. Skiers are getting older and there are fewer young people taking up winter sports. It seems that this stagnating or declining trend will need more effort from the ski nations in Europe and north America if it is to be reversed, if it can be,” added Mr Vanat,
“On the other hand, the reports show the development of the ski industry in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where it’s obvious that the most development of the ski industry over the coming decade will happen, although a few resorts in these regions have already reached a mature stage. Despite many of these wanting to attract foreign customers, they first need to concentrate on the development of their domestic market. There is still a lot to do in this regard and if the resorts from Eastern Europe and Central Asia fail at doing this, it’s unlikely international clients will be enough to maintain some of these newly built resorts.”
“For me it’s a reasonable guess that worldwide skier visits may reach 420 million by 2020, provided the Western resorts manage to address the generational issues and the developing resorts in the East manage to stimulate their domestic visitation and win their local population to the ski. These are already some challenges!”
The report is available for free download