Austria helping to boost Chinese ski industry

CGTN Europe

The Asian Winter Games is a chance for China to showcase its booming ice and snow sports industry - which has seen significant growth since the Beijing Winter Olympics.  Now Austria is increasing cooperation with Chinese ski resorts. Correspondent Johannes Pleschbergger reports from the slopes.  #AsianWinterGames #China #Austria

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00:00Each year Gerhard Zint sends dozens of instructors to China to teach the Austrian way of skiing.

00:09Our trainers, they fly over and they stay about two months in China.

00:15This cooperation is getting more and more intensive because more and more ski resorts are developed in China.

00:22But the exchange of know-how between Austria and China goes both ways.

00:28While Austria has long been a skiing mecca, the number of Austrians hitting the slopes

00:33has significantly declined over the past decades due to both rising lift prices and temperatures.

00:39It's why Austria's biggest ski lift operator, Ski Amadei, is now looking east

00:43to learn from China's massively growing winter sports sector.

00:48In the past five years, the number of skiers and snowboarders in the People's Republic has almost tripled,

00:54helped by the construction of massive ski domes in many Chinese cities.

00:58Gustav Eisinger, who runs the continent's second largest ski area near Salzburg, says that's something Europe could adopt.

01:06This easy access to skiing, this is what we can learn in Austria from Chinese ski resorts.

01:12Ski domes definitely would help a lot to keep this lifestyle, also in the big agglomerations of Europe, alive.

01:24Meanwhile, China's often relatively small-scaled resorts could learn from the alpine trend

01:30to interlink multiple ski areas, creating much larger ski destinations.

01:36To ride on all of our slopes, you need three or four days.

01:41And after the slope, it's time for apres-ski.

01:45Hey guys, is it okay if we sit here?

01:48Yeah, sure.

01:50Eisinger predicts this festive alpine lifestyle will soon make its way to the People's Republic.

01:56I think also Chinese ski resorts could actually adopt this concept.

02:03It keeps skiers in the sports for decades.

02:08Another measure to keep people in the sport is the exchange of know-how.

02:13Eisinger started cooperating with China's Taiwu resort seven years ago

02:17and is hoping to continue this cooperation in the future.

02:20Johannes Blechberger, CGTN, Flachau in Austria.

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