The Ski Industry’s Climate Reality
The Ski Climate Summit, Part 1: What the economics and data already show.
This is Part 1 of a short series about the Ski Climate Summit, hosted by Atomic, POW Europe, and WFN. I considered writing a single recap, but there was too much to unpack at once. Instead, I’ll publish a few pieces over the next week or two.
The summit brought together people who are serious about working on hard problems. Ski resorts, brands, startups, advocacy groups, and material innovators were all in the same room, learning from each other and trying to figure out what collaboration around sustainability and climate work actually looks like.
The summit came at a particularly sobering moment. Many presentations highlighted how poor the ski season has been in the Western United States. Europe is doing better overall, but as of mid-January, conditions were still fragile, especially in Italy.
Day 1 opened with broad, high-level perspectives. Auden Schendler, author and former VP of Sustainability at Aspen Ski Co, set the tone, followed by Ben Aidan of POW Europe, Nick Sargent of Snowsports Industries America (SIA), and Jerome Pero of Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI).
Oliver Fritz, senior economist at WIFO (a non-profit, independent economic research institute in Austria), grounded the overarching issues in economics. He presented data on climate trends, the ski industry, and economic impact. For me, this was the highlight. Not because the news was good. It wasn’t. But it provided a clear picture of what is actually at stake, which is essential for evaluating the work the industry is doing in response.
The Economics Are Hard to Track
At a global level, skiing still looks healthy at first glance. There are ski resorts in 68 countries across nearly every major mountain range. Participation looks stable, with roughly 390 to 400 million skier visits per year worldwide. Equipment sales continue to hover around 10 million pairs annually, even after the post-pandemic inventory correction that drove an 11% decline in the 2024/25 season.
But, only a small fraction of resorts account for most skier visits. Just over 13% of global resorts generate nearly three quarters of all skiing activity. The industry is starting to cluster around altitude, latitude, and narrowing windows of snow reliability.
The overall impact of the industry is also poorly measured, which makes it harder for anyone to understand what's actually at risk. Lift tickets and ski resort revenues by themselves only capture a small fraction of the overall economic activity related to skiing. The real impact shows up when you include lodging, food, transport, retail, and induced spending across regional economies. Skiing affects regional employment, public services, and population retention. In many European mountain communities, it's the primary economic engine keeping villages alive.
Unfortunately, there isn't a clean global accounting of ski tourism's contribution to GDP. Countries measure it differently, if they measure it at all. In the US, it falls under the "outdoor industry satellite account," (which I’ve written about before) which groups everything from amusement parks to skiing to horseback riding to gardening. That generalization is why the "$1.3T outdoor recreation industry" is one of my least favorite, oft-cited stats in the industry.
Where data is more comprehensive, we do get a slightly better picture.
In the US, annual recreation revenue related to snow tourism is estimated at around $4 billion. In Austria, lift ticket revenue alone sits around €1.3 billion annually, but total tourism expenditure tied to skiing is over €8 billion, representing about 30% of the country’s tourism-induced GDP.
Skiing is an economic backbone of large parts of the Alps and specific geographic regions worldwide. The infrastructure supporting it, like lifts, snowmaking systems, access roads, and purpose-built accommodation, represents multi-generational commitments. So many things: local tax bases, public services, and property values, all depend on reliable winters.
What the Climate Data Shows
TLDR; Nothing good.
Across the Alps, warming has occurred at roughly twice the global average. Austria has experienced close to 3°C of warming above a 1850-1900 baseline, compared to about 1.5°C globally. Most of this warming has occurred since 1980, and winter temperatures are rising faster than any other season.
Ski seasons worldwide have already shortened, despite common claims that they are simply “shifting later” rather than becoming shorter. In the United States, comparisons show that season lengths have shortened by five to seven days on average, and there are possibilities of losses up to 33 days under low emissions projections. Similar patterns are evident across Europe.
Mitigation matters, but won’t eliminate impact in the coming years. In scenarios where we’re able to significantly manage emissions, warming continues but remains somewhat constrained. In the moderate and high emissions pathways, temperature increases will push snow conditions past critical thresholds across much of the world.
One of Fritz’s central points is that conditions will worsen regardless of what we do. The difference between scenarios is whether that worsening is manageable or catastrophic.
The Christmas Window
One way climate change destabilizes skiing is not through outright disappearance of snow, but through inconsistency.
A marginally shorter season is something the industry has learned to manage. Mega-corps like Vail and Alterra are able to hedge against variable seasons by pooling resources and revenues and selling season passes ahead of time, this isn’t a viable long-term approach, nor does it work for smaller resorts.
Data shows not just a loss of snow days, but an increasing variance around when snow arrives, how long it stays, and whether it aligns with time periods that matter the most from an economic perspective. Businesses, not just in the ski industry, operate on predictability.
The Christmas and New Year holidays sit at the center of this problem.
That window anchors the entire winter. It’s when staffing levels are set, drives a large portion of annual revenue, and is a time culturally associated with skiing. Historically, this period has been reliable enough that both consumers and resorts could plan around it with some confidence.
Under moderate emissions projections, without improved snowmaking capacity, reliability of Christmas snow in Alpine regions could fall from historical norms to 65% of resorts by 2050. In higher emissions scenarios, it collapses even further.
If Christmas reliability drops, changing behaviors can have knock-on effects. Families might delay bookings until conditions are confirmed, compressing demand into shorter lead times. Cancellation risk increases. Staffing becomes more difficult as seasonal workers face uncertain hours and resorts aren’t sure how much staff they’ll need.
This doesn’t even need to become a consistent trend. Years like this year in the Western US are likely to have knock-on effects almost immediately. How many people now have sub-par Christmas holidays anchored in their recent memory? Do you think they’re more or less likely to plan a Christmas trip around skiing next year? It doesn’t matter if there are good snow years mixed in with bad ones, the erosion of predictability can wreak havoc on balance sheets and in the minds of consumers.
Capital, Concentration, and Closures
Changes won’t affect all resorts equally. Elevation, latitude, and terrain diversity will increasingly be tied to the long-term viability of resorts, with high-altitude resorts above 2,000 meters (in the Alps) likely to retain viability longer. Large, interconnected ski areas with a wide elevation range have the flexibility to shift operations around based on conditions.
But lower-elevation resorts face a very different reality. Under even moderate warming scenarios, many already approach collapse. 186 French ski resorts have closed already, mostly for reasons already outlined above.
This uneven impact has the potential to create both stratification of capital and funneling effects rather than a general decline.
Investment will concentrate toward places at higher altitudes or with more favorable climates that have a longer shelf life, making it hard for smaller or lower results to attract the capital needed for investment in snowmaking or other adaptations.
Visitation will probably follow similar trends as lower altitude resorts are unable to compete, provide comparable experiences, and eventually close. This means that employment across the industry will both shrink but also concentrate. The ski industry will start to contract geographically (it’s already happening), even if overall participation looks stable in the short term. Resorts that survive will gain market power (and crowds, and the ability to raise prices because there are fewer options).
In Europe, ski-related infrastructure and real estate (lifts, snowmaking systems, resort housing, etc) represent an estimated €120 to €175 billion in capital. Under high-emissions scenarios where a majority of resorts become economically unviable, a significant share of that capital loses its economic purpose.
Housing markets might split between between high-altitude locations that retain value and lower-elevation communities that lose everything. Municipal budgets will weaken as tax bases shrink. Public services become harder to sustain. Younger residents leave in search of stable employment.
The Long-Term Participation Risk
The participation decline that Fritz outlined is a bit of a domino effect.
Maybe it’s obvious to point out, but the first participants the industry will lose are the most price-sensitive ones. If costs will continue to rise as resorts attempt to price in the impact of fluctuating seasons and visitation, the casual and occasional skiers will be the first to stop coming back.
Lower-elevation, small-scale, and closer to population center resorts serve as entry points for beginners and families. When these hills close, you lose pathways and opportunities to experience the sport at all. Parents ski less often. Children are never introduced. This participation loss can compound. A bad season affects participation and revenue in the short/medium term. A broken pathway for new skiers affects the future customer base.
What Comes Next
Tourism depends on climate stability, but tourism emissions are growing faster than the global average. Long-haul ski travel and other transportation is the dominant source of ski industry related emissions. As skiing concentrates into fewer viable destinations, travel distances will increase, intensifying emissions and accelerating the instability the industry depends on avoiding.
The industry has power to influence and intervene on things like transport access, pricing structures, rental/ownership models, circularity, material innovation, and advocacy.
Work is happening, and I’ll cover a few of the different approaches highlighted at the conference in future newsletters. It remains an open question whether those efforts are happening at the scale, speed, and urgency the problem demands.
Sobering, for sure. Thanks for the insights. Any commentary on the impact of NGOs (like POW) are having on rallying support (hope?) or stemming these trends?
Is there any hint of lobbying/action by major corporate players such as Vail and Alterra pushing for mitigation at a higher level?