The ski industry spent five years asking itself an uncomfortable question. In the winter of 2020/21, global skier visits fell by roughly half. Was that a shock to recover from, or the beginning of a decline that climate and cost would finish?
The answer arrived in April 2026, in the eighteenth edition of Laurent Vanat’s International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism. The 2024/25 season recorded 399 million skier visits worldwide — past the 392 million of 2018/19, which had stood as the record.
The alpine countries, one by one
The report’s country notes are the interesting part for anyone booking a European trip. Switzerland recorded its strongest results in more than fifteen years. Italy posted its third consecutive net-positive season. France, Austria, Spain and Andorra all grew. Japan and Germany did not recover as strongly, and the question of whether they return to pre-pandemic levels is still open.
That Swiss line is worth pausing on, because it sits alongside a second Swiss record: 18.5 million hotel nights in the 2024/25 winter, and 18.7 million the following winter. Two independent measurements — lift-ticket scans and hotel registrations — pointing the same way.
The finding that should unsettle the industry
Buried in the good news is a genuinely strange observation: visitation is becoming less and less sensitive to snow conditions. Snowfall was below average across much of Europe and several North American regions in 2024/25, and the visitor numbers went up anyway.
Two mechanisms explain most of it. Snowmaking has moved from a supplement to an infrastructure, so a resort’s open terrain in a poor year now bears only a loose relationship to what actually fell from the sky. And season-pass models have front-loaded the purchase decision: people who bought a pass in September ski in February regardless of the forecast.
The report also flags a commercial tension underneath: window prices are rising faster than revenue per skier visit, which means yield is falling even as volume rises. In plain terms, resorts are selling more days at headline prices that fewer people actually pay.
What the numbers say
For a traveller, three things follow. Booking early is now the norm rather than the exception, and it is priced accordingly — window rates are the worst deal on the mountain. Poor natural snow years no longer close resorts the way they once did, but they do concentrate everyone onto the snowmade runs, which is a crowding problem rather than a coverage problem. And the alpine countries that grew most in 2024/25 — Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria — are precisely the ones where availability tightened.
If you are choosing between them, our country pages for Switzerland, Italy and France are the place to begin, and our alpine travel tools help narrow it down by season and profile.
Frequently asked questions
How many people ski worldwide?
The measure used by the industry is skier visits, not people: one skier on the mountain for one day is one visit. The 2024/25 season recorded 399 million skier visits across roughly 2,000 ski areas in 68 countries.
Did skiing recover from the pandemic?
Yes, and past its previous peak. Global skier visits fell by almost half in 2020/21, recovered to 366 million in 2023/24, and reached 399 million in 2024/25 — above the 392 million record set in 2018/19.
Which alpine country performed best in 2024/25?
Switzerland recorded its best results in more than fifteen years. Italy logged its third consecutive positive season, and France, Austria, Spain and Andorra all grew.
Working out which alpine country fits your trip? Our TOP 50 lists cover the people, places and hotels shaping each one.
