Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
In the past two days, in the field of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, various ice and snow events are being fiercely carried out. Outside the stadium, the cultural and creative products of the Winter Olympic Games are highly sought after, the ski resorts and ice rinks are crowded with ice and snow experiencers, and ice and snow tourism has become a new trend...
Ice and snow are also golden mountains and silver mountains. Riding on the east wind of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the public's enthusiasm for ice and snow sports is high, and the ice and snow resources are transformed into ice and snow culture and ice and snow economy, so that "cold resources" are warmed up, and China's ice and snow industry ushers in a golden period of development.
Ice and snow sports have become a new fashion
"I didn't expect skiing to be so exciting!" This Spring Festival, Zhang Wei, a Hubei boy who had never been exposed to ice and snow sports before, met with friends at Shennongjia International Ski Resort to ski. He said that with the holding of the Beijing Winter Olympics, ice and snow sports have become a new fashion. In his circle of friends, ice climbing, curling, and extreme sports on snow have also attracted more and more attention.
Like Xiao Zhang, this year, many people choose "New Year on ice" and "New Year on snow". At the Shichahai Ice Rink in Beijing, people either step on the ice knife or ride the ice car and enjoy the fun of ice and snow sports; in the Yinchuan Yuehai Ski Resort in Ningxia, many people wear professional equipment and experience the thrill of galloping on the slopes... Ice and snow sports have become one of the most fashionable "ways to celebrate" the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger.
Ice and snow sports are "hot", and ice and snow venue operators feel it the most. At the Chen Lu International Ice Center in Beijing's Chaoyang District, the daily figure skating and hockey classes are lined up from morning to night. "When we started business in 2017, we only had 1 ice hockey team, but now it has increased to 8, and there are 220 trainees who come to train regularly." General Manager Yang Yiwei said.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, as of October 2021, the number of participants in ice and snow sports in China reached 346 million, and the goal of "driving 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports" has been achieved.
Cultural tourism products are highly favored
Ice and snow sports are hot, and the consumption of related cultural tourism products is also growing rapidly.
After the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the sales of the same down jacket for athletes increased significantly; the Mascot of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the "Ice Pier", was also quickly sold out, and a "pier" was difficult to find. In Altay, Xinjiang, tourists travel on "fur skis" to integrate skiing and folk customs; at the Xiangshawan Ski Resort in Inner Mongolia, snow lovers can look up and see the desert, with a different experience...
According to the big data of the tourism platform, since December last year, the number of ticket bookings for ski resorts across the country has increased by 86% year-on-year, and skates, ski clothes and skis have become hot "New Year goods". Especially during this year's Spring Festival, the turnover of ice and snow sports equipment and equipment has increased by one to three times, and ice and snow sports tours, ice and snow folk tourism, ice and snow health tourism, indoor ice and snow tourism and other types of products are rapidly bringing fire to the winter tourism market.
Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Research Institute, pointed out that from a nationwide perspective, the new pattern of "ice and snow economy" in which the east, west, south, south, and north, all year round, and full bloom has taken shape, and there will be more and more ice and snow projects in the future. The "China Ice and Snow Tourism Development Report (2022)" predicts that from 2021 to 2022, China's ice and snow leisure tourism revenue is expected to exceed 320 billion yuan.
The ice and snow industry has broad prospects
A ski ticket points to a consumer market, a set of ice hockey equipment contains an industrial chain, and an ice and snow town reflects a development model.
Since the successful bid for the Winter Olympics in 2015, the ice and snow sports of "not leaving Shanhaiguan" have made great strides to "expand from the south to the west and east" to achieve nationwide coverage and four-season operation. As of the beginning of 2021, there are 654 standard ice rinks and 803 ski resorts in the country, an increase of 317% and 41% compared with the successful bid for the Winter Olympics in 2015. China has initially formed an ice and snow industry system based on the construction and operation of ice and snow venue facilities, with ice and snow public leisure fitness and competition performances as the core, ice and snow sports tourism as the driving force, and ice and snow equipment manufacturing as the support.
According to the "2021 China Ice and Snow Industry Development Research Report", from 2015 to 2020, the total scale of China's ice and snow industry will increase from 270 billion yuan to 600 billion yuan. By 2025, the total scale of China's ice and snow industry is expected to reach the scale of trillions of yuan, and the ice and snow industry is becoming a new economic growth point.
Wang Shirley, director of the Sports Industry Development Research Center of Tsinghua University, said that the preparation of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has laid a good foundation for the high-quality development of China's ice and snow industry. The development of China's ice and snow industry is experiencing a process from "1" to "N", from infrastructure improvement to product and service upgrades, from increasing the number of consumers to improving consumption levels and consumer experience, from the improvement of the industrial chain to the positive development of the industrial value chain. (Reporter Leaf)
People's Daily Overseas Edition ( 2022-02-11 Edition 02)