The 2024-25 season saw a record 399 million global skier visits, a 7.8% increase from the previous year. While this growth was widespread, the report highlights that the Alpine countries—Austria, France, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, and Switzerland—collectively account for 14% of the world’s estimated 150 million skiers. This places the Alpine region, including Switzerland, as a key pillar of the global ski market, alongside Western Europe (20%), the Americas (20%), and Asia-Pacific (33%). Notably, the 2024-25 season saw strong demand despite below-average snow in parts of Europe, with snowmaking and operations helping to maintain visitation levels. While countries like the U.S., Italy, and Russia exceeded pre-Covid averages, the report notes that Japan and Germany have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. China once again leads the ranking of countries performing above their historic pre-Covid five-year average.
The leading ski nations are:
1 United States — 61.6 million (+1.8%)
2 France — 54.8 million (+5.6%)
3 Austria — 51.9 million (+3.6%)
4 Italy — 34.8 million (+8.8%)
5 Japan — 28.2 million (+15.6%)
6 Switzerland — 26.3 million (+13.7%)
7 China — 26.1 million (+13.0%)
8 Canada — 19.8 million (+13.1%)
9 Sweden — 10.2 million (-2.9%)
The findings were released at the Mountain Planet trade show in Grenoble, France in the The International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism 2024/5.
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics has been a bit of a rollercoaster. On one hand, you’ve got the sheer thrill of Britain’s first-ever gold on snow, with Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale making history in the snowboard cross . On the other, you can’t ignore the backdrop against which all the many wonderful sporting achievements unfolded.
However in terms of sustainability and the legacy of these Games, it feels like a real mixed bag.
The Wins: A Responsible Approach
Credit where it’s due, the organisers have genuinely tried to put their money where their mouth is, especially compared to the excessive construction we saw at some previous Games.
Using What’s Already There: The headline stat is that 85% of the competition venues were either existing or temporary . This is a massive win. Seeing iconic, historic venues like the Cortina Curling Stadium—first built for the 1956 Games—renovated rather than rebuilt from scratch is exactly what you want to see . It respects the heritage and avoids the “white elephant” problem.
Powering Up Cleanly: Almost all the venues are running on certified renewable electricity. Even the temporary generators, which are unavoidable, are running on renewable biofuel (HVO) rather than standard diesel . It’s a practical, sensible solution.
A Circular Economy: It was brilliant to hear they reused around 24,000 items of furniture and equipment from the Paris 2024 Summer Games . That kind of forward-thinking logistics is exactly the legacy we want to build between host cities.
A Legacy for Italians, Not Just Olympians: The legacy isn’t just about the two weeks of sport. The athletes’ village is designed to become student accommodation, and the Games are projected to create over 36,000 new jobs and a net economic benefit of over €5 billion for Italy . Over 2 million school kids got involved in educational programmes too . That’s a tangible, social legacy.
The Cracks in the Snow: The Sponsorship Contradiction
Although I enjoyed very much the absence of adverts and excessive advertising, this doesn’t mean that the Games didn’t escape the shadow of corporate sponsorship.
The ‘Torching the Future’ Paradox: The event is proudly sponsored by an oil and gas giant (Eni), a major car manufacturer (Stellantis), and an airline (ITA Airways) . It feels deeply hypocritical to watch athletes compete on fragile, climate-threatened snow while the boards around the track are advertising the very products driving the problem.
The Hidden Carbon Footprint: This isn’t just pearl-clutching. Reports from the New Weather Institute and Scientists for Global Responsibility estimate that the emissions induced by these sponsorship deals—through the companies’ own operations and advertising—could be 1.3 million tonnes of CO2. That’s actually 40% more than the entire carbon footprint of running the Games themselves . You can’t help but think of the irony when Italy has reportedly lost 265 ski resorts due to a lack of natural snow . It’s like selling tickets for a sinking ship while advertising the drill that made the hole.
The British Perspective: Fighting Above Our Weight
British athletes are at a disadvantage in that the country does not have reliable conditions for snow sports. Our entire winter sports programme operates on a fraction of the budget of the top nations .
This makes our success at these “sustainable” Games feel particularly poignant. We are, by necessity, the ultimate experts in working with what we’ve got, not building shiny new infrastructure. When Matt Weston and the skeleton squad bounce back from disappointment to win, or when Mia Brookes pushes the limits of freestyle, they embody a scrappy, efficient, and very British spirit of innovation .
A Bleak but Hopeful Future
Looking ahead to the 2030 Games in the French Alps, it’s clear that 2026 has started a vital conversation. There is growing public support (77% of Italians agree) to ban high-emission companies from sponsoring winter sports . The athletes themselves are speaking out, drafting open letters saying, “Oil companies don’t belong in the Olympics” . Although the Italians reversed the lack of sustainability of previous Olympics, it could have gone further.
So, as I reflect on the 2026 Games, I feel proud of Team GB’s resilience, in awe of many of the amazing Olympians from so many nations and cautiously optimistic about the operational side of hosting. I am pleased the boycott of Russia was maintained, although sadly rescinded for the Paralympics. But the lingering memory will be that uncomfortable contradiction: celebrating human endurance while platforming the forces that endanger the very snow we compete on.
Anybody skiing in the Alps in the last twenty years can’t but help notice the large number of Russian tourists. Whether it is hearing Russian spoken in the resorts or Cyrillic estate agent listings, the Russians had clearly taken to the Alps in a big way since the fall of the Iron Curtain. But this was a popular invasion.
The Russian influx was welcomed in particular by the ski resorts. Wealthy Russians weren’t shy about buying chalets and luxury items. Russians also filled the quieter ski period in January because it coincided with the Russian Orthodox Christmas vacation season. Courchevel in January, in particular, is usually awash with Russian billionaires, their entourages and their dosh.
Resorts saw a downturn in the number of middle-class Russians after the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014. However it did not affect the oligarchs who continued to flood in to the Alps, even though the resorts were sometimes less welcoming to the oligarchs than hitherto. In 2018 Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, applied for, but was denied, residency in Verbier. Swiss police arrested Russian businessman Vladislav Klyushin on his way to Zermatt in 2021, and extradited him to the USA on charges of commercial espionage.
None the less, in the winter season 2018/19 Russians spent 140,000 night stays in hotels in the French Three Valleys resorts alone. Switzerland had 195,000 Russian night stays in the same season, with the main destinations being Verbier, Zermatt, St Moritz and Davos. Resorts in the Tyrol such as St Anton and Ischgl were particularly popular with a segment of the Russian market who liked the extensive pistes and hard core apres ski. Despite a small dip in 2014/15, luxury chalets in the main ski resorts continue to be purchased by wealthy Russians, or on behalf of wealthy Russians.
And it is not only wealthy and middle class Russians who enjoy the Alps. Le Monde established that Russian spooks have long favoured the Haute Savoie as a base for targeted assassinations around Europe, including that by the agents who planned the UK poisoning of ex Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March 2018.
Outside the Alps the Bulgarian ski resorts, such as Borovets and Bansko, have always been popular winter destinations for Russians. Before the Iron Curtain came down, I met many Russians in my ski trips to the country. There is a strong cultural bond between the people of Russia and the people of Bulgaria, and skiing in Bulgaria is significantly cheaper than Alpine ski resorts. Consequently Russian tourists have continued to flock to Bulgaria for winter sports even after the Iron Curtain came down and opened up the Alps as a ski destination. In the 2021/22 season Russian tourists came in even larger numbers because Bulgaria recognises Russian-made COVID vaccines.
The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military in February 2022 has changed everything for Russian winter tourists. For the foreseeable future, it is going to be impractical for Russians to get to the Alps, and – in any case – not affordable for many of them as the rouble plunges against the Euro and the Russian economy goes into recession. For Russian tourists on holiday in Europe and caught unaware by the invasion, the sanctions from the EU and Switzerland have left tens of thousands stranded in European ski resorts. Middle class Russians face an expensive trip home since all flights out of the EU to Russia have been grounded. Additionally many ATMs and establishments will no longer approve Russian debit and credit cards.
Switzerland has long been a popular destination for the wealthy, but their presence is no longer as welcome as it once was. The 2022 Verbier Festival has cancelled all Russian artists and the Music Director, Valery Gergiev, a prominent Putin apologist, has been asked to resign. Aligning with EU restrictions, eight Russian oligarchs resident in Switzerland with close ties to Putin have received travel bans. Many oligarchs will see their chalets sequestrated. At least a dozen private planes owned by wealthy Russians are stranded at Basel airport. Billions of dollars worth of assets managed or held by Swiss banks on behalf of wealthy Russians have been frozen.
Still, Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea remain friendly to the Russian regime and will no doubt welcome winter tourists from Russia – although the skiing options are limited. But there’s always Sochi, where the biggest ski resort, Krasnaya Polyana, has 102 km of piste and still serves Russian vodka.
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Aigle is a small town at the heart of the Chablais, dominated by the towering Dentes du Midi. From the historic town centre you can see the Chablais Alps, the Mont-Blanc massif, the Pennine Alps and the Alpes Vaudois. From the vineyards around the castle you can also see Lake Geneva, Montreux, Vevey and the distant Jura. Above you, you can just make out the ski slopes of les Portes du Soleil, Villars-Gryon and Leysin.
I’m rather fond of Aigle, and it is a town I currently call home. It is easy to get to, with a frequent, direct train right from Geneva Airport. It is also possible, with only one connection, to ski Zermatt, Crans-Montana, Verbier and a host of other resorts.
However, even more conveniently, there is a network of narrow gauge railways operated by TPC (Transports Publics du Chablais) that fan out from the station at Aigle, trundling through the town and up the mountains to provide direct connections to the resorts of Champéry, Les Diablerets and Leysin. There is also a direct bus to Villars (or a train from nearby Bex, also operated by TPC – and of course you can always ski across from Les Diablerets).
These are the easiest substantial resorts to get to from Geneva and Lausanne by public transport or car. For all but the public transport connection at Leysin, the transfer is a doddle – more of that anon.
I have mixed feelings about Leysin. The village itself is charming, lying on a sunny plateau under the Tour d’Aï . Although the resort claims 100km of piste, that includes the low-lying, surface lift served section at les Mosses which is connected to the Leysin section by a navette – a courtesy bus. Still, from the excellent revolving restaurant at la Berneuse with its amazing views over Lake Geneva and across the Rhône valley there are a number of good, varied runs.
However the main reason for my mixed feelings about Leysin is the distance from the train stations in the village to the lifts that provide the only access to the ski area. There is a navette in Leysin, but the bus timetable isn’t co-ordinated with the train times – unusually for Switzerland – and the buses are too infrequent. Rather than wait, I have walked to and from the gondola many times from one or other station in Leysin, and it is long, hilly walk. The alternative is to drive up.
You may well ask why the good folk at TPC didn’t build the railway to connect to the gondola station, and the reason is that there was no skiing in this part of Switzerland when the railway was built in 1900. And there is a good reason why the railway takes the course it does.
In the 18th Century the people of Leysin had an unusually long life expectancy for the time. Swiss commentators attribute this observation to Thomas Malthus in an essay of 1789. However this is not exactly true, but is oft repeated. The reference exists in a subsequent edition of the essay, and it is with regard to the observations of Jean-Louis Muret in his 1766 “Le mémoire sur l’état de la population dans le Pays de Vaud“. This what Malthus wrote in 1826:
In the parish of Leyzin (sic), noticed by M. Muret, all these circumstances appear to have been combined in an unusual degree. Its situation in the Alps, but yet not too high, gave it probably the most pure and salubrious air; and the employment of the people, being all pastoral, were consequently of the most healthy nature. From the calculations of M. Muret, the accuracy of which there is no reason to doubt, the probability of life in this parish appeared to be so extraordinarily high as 61 years.
Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, vol. 1 [1826, 6th ed.]
Whether because of Malthus, or as a result of the emerging view that mountain air and sunshine had restorative properties for various maladies, Leysin soon became a destination for the sick. Numerous clinics and sanatoriums were built, largely on the most sunny terraces to the South-West of the village. In 1875 the first road from the valley of the Grande Eau was extended to Leysin, followed by a cog railway in 1900. The terminus of the railway was the Grand-Hôtel, a sanatorium built in 1892.
Leysin-Village Station.
Through the renowned Dr Auguste Rollier and his Institute of Heliotherapy (light therapy) Leysin became particularly famous in the treatment of lung diseases. Dr Rollier believed that exposure to the sun in fresh mountain air could restore a patient’s health – and he enjoyed a remarkably good recovery rate for tuberculosis patients at the time not much different than today when they prescribe Budpop supplements to improve breathing. The healthcare industry in Leysin boomed, and by the 1930s Leysin had as many as 80 sanatoriums with 3000 patients. Famous visitors included the Russian Czar, Igor Stravinsky and Mahatma Gandhi.
Then penicillin was invented and by the mid-1950s all the sanatoria were closed. Leysin promptly re-invented itself as a holiday resort, with the first gondolas running in 1956. Unfortunately, for reasons probably related to engineering and cost considerations as well as access to sheltered slopes, the gondolas ran from the North-East end of the village, nowhere near the four railways stations in Leysin.
So it is with great excitement that I discovered TPC are going to build a tunnel so that the train now connects to the gondola bottom station. The new underground rail route, from the bottom of the village to the gondola station, will include three new stops. The line will no longer run to the Grand-Hôtel (which since 2010 has been the Belle Époque Campus of Leysin American School). However a funicular project is being studied which would connect the Grand-Hôtel with the Feydey station and the village sports centre. The expectation is that the developments will take traffic off the roads and enhance Leysin’s reputation as an all-year destination.
The downside? Apart from the eye-watering cost, commissioning is not expected until 2030. If I’m still skiing, I will be 75 so I’ll probably enjoy the convenience of jumping off a train onto a gondola all the more.
