An uphill battle for a slice of the ski business is in full swing all around Beijing this winter as a flurry of new ski resorts has opened in almost every mountain area over the past few months.
On December 22 alone, three new resorts were launched, bringing the number of ski resorts in the capital city to seven.
Investors clearly believed that skiing operations are a gold mine, with the potential to provide huge profits for only limited investment.
Zhang Lixin, general manager of the Beijing Huaibei International Ski Resort, looks at it this way: His resort can accommodate 30,000 to 50,000 skiers this season.
If each skier spends an average of 200 yuan (US$24), this represents a turnover of 6 million to 10 million yuan (US$743,000 to US$1.2 million), he said.
Huaibei charges 90 yuan (US$10.87) for one hour of skiing, which includes ski and boot rental fees.
Song Wennian of the Nanshan Ski Village is even more optimistic. He estimated that there are 400,000 potential skiers in Beijing. If each one spends 1,000 yuan (US$120) for the entire skiing season, the total ski market in Beijing would rake in 400 million yuan (US$48 million) annually.
An analysis of the ski market by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows a rosy scenario. The report concludes that potential ski enthusiasts -- managers, senior executives, private enterprise owners -- represent the highest paid sectors of Chinese society.
However, as a new industry, the fledgling Chinese ski resort business is still in its infancy.
Amateur skiing in China didn't really get off the ground until 1996, when the Winter Asia Games were held at Yabuli, a snow resort in Northwest China's Heilongjiang Province.
The development of Beijing's ski resorts started with the opening of Shijinglong snow resort in Miyun County in 2000.
(China Daily February 19, 2002)
