DgcitySki slopes across northern China opened their gates in the first week of November, and travelers are already moving. This winter’s ice-and-snow season has started earlier than usual, giving a confident send-off to an industry Beijing expects to grow into one of the country’s distinctive new economic pillars.
A resort in Changchun, capital of the northeastern province of Jilin, officially began its season on November 6, one of the first major openings. Across the region, hotels, hot spring complexes and snow parks followed suit, racing to capture a market that barely existed for ordinary Chinese consumers a decade ago but has since spread well beyond the northeast.
Long-distance routes tell the clearest story. On one major travel platform, bookings for popular ice-and-snow journeys covering more than 2,000 kilometers, with departures from November through the run-up to the 2027 Spring Festival, doubled compared with a year earlier. Roughly two-thirds of the travelers on those routes came from southern China and the eastern coast, regions with little natural snow of their own and a seemingly growing appetite for it.
That geographic split explains much of the official enthusiasm. Winter tourism pulls spending from wealthy coastal cities into provinces whose economies long leaned on heavy industry and agriculture, lengthening consumption chains across ski schools, equipment rental, hotels, restaurants and transport. Industry analysts argue the key now is integration: bundling time on the slopes with hot springs, cultural performances and retail so a visitor’s spending extends well beyond the lift ticket.
Provinces are organizing the season at scale. Liaoning, which borders Jilin to the south, said its 2026-27 ice-and-snow season will run from late November through March 2027, with activities spread across all 14 of its cities and around 100 featured winter products, from ski resorts and snow parks to sporting events and stage performances.
The ambition behind such programs is set out in a national guideline that targets a total ice-and-snow market of 1.2 trillion yuan, roughly 179 billion dollars, by 2027 and 1.5 trillion yuan by 2030. Those figures once looked heroic for a country where skiing was a niche pastime; the early-November booking surge, and the sight of planes from Shenzhen and Guangzhou filling with first-time snow travelers, makes them look more grounded.
For visitors, the practical message is that the season now starts in earnest before winter officially deepens. Early-season rooms and slope space remain plentiful, while the post-Spring Festival stretch into March offers deeper cold and, in the northeast, some of the most elaborate ice festivals anywhere in the world.
