Winter sports market gears up for huge jump

China is a fast growing winter sports market in the world, with the market size expected to reach 800 billion yuan ($117 billion) by 2022, and will realize a target of 1 trillion yuan by 2025, said Li Yingchuan, deputy head of the General Administration of Sport of China, at the World Winter Sports (Beijing) Expo 2020.

The government has set a very ambitious target which will bring 300 million people to the winter sports, said Henrik S. Stefes, head of coach department at SNOW51, an Austrian professional ski training institution.

With the rise of skiing in China, there is a severe shortage of highly qualified ski instructors. The SNOW51 has participated in a project launched by Chinese and Austrian governments to train 1,000 Chinese ski instructors.

This year, the ski training institute along with another five companies organized by the economic delegation department of Austria participated in last week's China International Fair for Trade in Services.

"We are looking for more partners who can support us on the '1,000 Chinese skiing coaches' project to bring that many Chinese instructors in order to have more people going to snow in the future," said Stefes at the CIFTIS.

The winter sport industry is growing, and has to grow because of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Stefes said.

"China is the biggest market, and I'm excited for the snow sports industry", Stefes added.