ExclusiveFosun to open Club Med ski resort near Beijing to capture China’s new-found love for snow sports leading to 2022 Winter Olympics

Club Méditerranée, which operates all-inclusive holiday resorts around the world, plans to open a winter retreat with a ski school near Beijing to take advantage of the expected popularity of snow sports during the 2022 Winter Olympics in the Chinese capital.

The company, commonly known as Club Med, will open a resort near the Chinese capital, where the winter games are scheduled to be held in three years’ time. Several ski resorts – including the Secret Garden resort by Malaysia’s Genting Berhad, and the privately-held Wanlong – are already operating in the Chongli district, about three hours drive from Beijing.

“There is a shortage of ski resorts and facilities in China,” said Qian Jiannong, chairman and chief executive officer of Club Med’s owner Fosun Tourism Group, in an interview with South China Morning Post, declining to give details. “We are planning to open more ski resorts in northern China and in Hebei, close to Beijing.”

The expansion plan looks to capture a growing demographic of affluent Chinese travellers – especially those millennials who came of age around the turn of the second millennium, now at the top of their earning cycles – who are increasingly taking to winter sports. Skiers from the Asia-Pacific region, mostly Chinese, are already flocking to Club Med’s resorts, with visitor numbers rising 82.4 per cent last year, Qian said.

Club Med, first established half a century ago in France, is known as a purveyor of the sun and sandy beaches, with 43 of its worldwide resorts featuring beach-front properties. It also operates 22 ski resorts, including one in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, and two in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces.