Countries with the most ski resorts
The world is a big place with 195 countries in it, depending upon who you ask. It made me wonder which country has the most ski resorts, so I went down the rabbit hole on google and found some interesting information. First off, of those 195 counties, 50 of them have ski resorts with a total of 2,106 established ski areas, and 48% of them are located within Europe. La Plagne in France is the world’s most popular ski resort with over 2.5 million skier visits per year and in the US last season (2019/20) there were 51.1 million skier visits which were down considerably from the peak of 60.5 million in 2010/11. In Canada, the total skier visit s hover around 18 million per year with BC and Quebec seeing the largest percentage of them. Things sure have grown when Jean Pomagalski created the first drag-lift in Alpe d’Huez France in 1935.Here’s where things stand now as far as the countries with the most ski resorts, these numbers and chart come from our friends at Unofficial Networks:
10. Sweden - 105
9. Germany - 116
8. Norway - 134
7. Switzerland - 148
6. Canada -172
5. France - 196
4. Italy - 217
3. Austria - 275
2. Japan - 305
1. USA - 428
Ski resort visits were no doubt much higher than average this past season due to covid, as were ski touring numbers. They will no doubt settle back down once this pandemic has gotten under control and people go back to work and the world returns to a more predictable normal.