Davos teaches China to ski as new rich lured to Swiss slopes

Davos has attracted Bill Clinton, Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates. Now the Swiss Alpine village is deploying a 27-year-old Chinese ski instructor to appeal to the world’s most populous nation.

Song Shuyao, who started skiing when she was 12, is one of eight Mandarinspeaking ski teachers paid by the local tourism board to spend the winter in the Swiss Alps this year, as Davos tries to break into China’s skiing market.

“I believe whoever touches the snow once will love skiing,” she said in a phone interview during a break from a full day of lessons in Davos. “Whoever starts to love skiing will demand more from facilities and the environment. Therefore they want to try skiing in the Alps.”

While China’s swelling middle class is a target for holiday destinations around the world, the country has been slow to embrace skiing. As the sport becomes more popular in China, Swiss ski resorts are pinning their hopes on Chinese guests, who spend twice as much as German visitors.

Attracting Chinese tourists is crucial for Swiss mountain resorts, including Davos, home to the World Economic Forum, which begins next week. Overnight stays in Swiss hotels during the ski season dropped 13 percent over the last five years, according to Swiss statistics office data.

There are about 5 million to 10 million active skiers in China, and that number could double by 2015, according the Swiss tourism board. Some 35 percent of Chinese skiers are planning a vacation abroad within the next two years, it said.

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Skiing’s appeal is part of a wider trend in Chinese tourism away from large groups and toward individual travelers, who tend to be younger, better educated and wealthier, according to Eric Thun, University Lecturer in Chinese Business Studies at Oxford University’s Said Business School.

“What they look for is something unique that they can impress their friends and neighbors with, that not everybody has done,” he said. “A bunch of new ski resorts have popped up in China, some within driving distance of Beijing. But they wouldn’t be considered anything compared to the Alps.”

Across Switzerland, overnight hotel stays by Chinese guests increased 28 percent last winter, from a year earlier. In Davos they tripled.

Adding to their appeal, the Chinese are among the top spenders among vacationers in Switzerland, according to Swiss tourism data, at an average of 350 francs a day -- more than twice what Germans usually spend. Expensive watches, such as those made by Cie. Financiere Richemont SA, are popular among the Chinese.

“The Chinese are aspiring to and adopting Western habits as they grow richer,” said Luca Solca, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in London. “They’re embracing a lifestyle that in their minds is the `happy life’ of well to-do-Westerners and skiing in Switzerland can certainly be seen as part of this.”