Which countries are best for skiing? What industry and Olympic data can tell you

The 2025 industry report: skier visits and resort counts

The European Outdoor Group's summary of the 2025 International Report on Snow and Mountain Tourism, the 17th edition covering the 2023/24 season, says the season recorded more than 366 million skier visits, the third strong season in a row. It identifies about 2,000 ski resorts worldwide in 68 countries with snow-covered ski areas.

Country details come from coverage of the same report on PlanetSKI. China resumed its growth with a new record season and passed its pre-pandemic five-year average. Italy and Chile had their best seasons ever, the United States was among the other strong performers, and France and Austria had yet to fully recover. Japan and Germany had historically low visitation. The coverage we could read gave no skier-visit figure for individual countries, so we do not quote any.

A skier visit counts each person each day on the slopes, so it measures activity, not skiers or quality. And a record in one year says little about a country's long-term appeal, because snow and economics vary.

The Alps: eight countries and the biggest linked area

Wikipedia says the Alps cross eight countries: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia and Switzerland. The range is about 1,200 km from west to east, and its highest peak is Mont Blanc at 4,808.73 m. Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. The article says tourism became the dominant industry in the region by the end of the 20th century, and reports 120 million annual visitors as of 2010, a figure that covers all tourism, not just skiing.

Les Trois Vallées in France is the best-documented example of scale. Wikipedia calls it the largest connected ski area in the world, linked solely by lifts and slopes. It lists 183 lifts and says the area claims about 600 km of runs but that an independent expert measured about 493 km, and it notes that Les Portes du Soleil may have greater total run length. The number depends on who measures and how, which is the main reason we do not rank resorts by size.

Our hubs list aparthotels in Alpine resort towns including St Anton am Arlberg, Val Thorens and Zermatt. For the region as a whole, aparthotels in Europe explains how the format works.

Olympic alpine medals as a sign of ski culture

The all-time Winter Olympic alpine skiing medal table is a published, checkable measure of competitive depth, though it says nothing about the holiday experience. Wikipedia's table, which runs from the 1936 debut through the 2026 Games, puts Austria first with 41 golds and 132 medals in total. Switzerland has 84 medals, the United States 52, France 52 and Italy 41 in the list we read.

The ordering is by gold medals, so a country with many silvers and bronzes, such as Norway with 42 medals in total, appears lower than its total suggests. The table also depends on how many events each Games ran. Treat it as a sign of depth in competitive alpine skiing in Austria and Switzerland, not as evidence that they offer better holidays.

FIS, the international governing body for skiing and snowboarding, was established in 1924 at the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France. It is based in Switzerland and has 141 member nations. Wikipedia adds that skiing events are recognised by the International Olympic Committee and the FIS, and that cross-country events have been on the Winter Olympic programme since its inception in 1924.

Canada: Whistler's scale and snowfall

Wikipedia describes Whistler Blackcomb as a ski resort in Whistler, British Columbia, with 8,171 acres (3,307 ha) of skiable area. The vertical drop is 1,530 m on Whistler and 1,565 m on Blackcomb, and annual snowfall is given as 11.7 m. The resort hosted the alpine skiing events at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The article reports 34 lifts in its infobox but a different count in the text, so the lift number is uncertain.

The page notes that ski-outs to the valley are usually possible from December through April. We do not have a source for season dates across Canada, so check each resort's own pages. Whistler has a hub on this site, and you can narrow it with the long-stay filter.

Japan: powder at Niseko and the Hakuba Valley

Japan is the most unusual entry here, because it combines famous snow with low visitor numbers in the 2023/24 report. Wikipedia says Niseko in Hokkaido is famous for its high-quality powder snowfall, known as Japow. Niseko United links four main areas, Annupuri, Higashiyama, Hirafu and Hanazono, sold on one pass: 8.87 square km of skiable terrain, 38 gondolas and lifts, 61 runs and 12 terrain parks.

Hakuba in Nagano was the main venue for the 1998 Winter Olympics. Wikipedia says it anchors ten ski areas with more than 200 runs between them, and says the valley averages about 655 cm of snow a year, with the 2024-25 winter setting a record of 782 cm. Hakuba and Kutchan, near Niseko, both have pages on this site: see Hakuba and Kutchan.

Scandinavia and the cross-country tradition

Skiing began here. Wikipedia says modern skiing evolved from beginnings in Scandinavia, and gives skiing a history of almost five millennia, with the debated possibility that it was practised more than 10,000 years ago in the Altai Mountains. It splits the sport into alpine and Nordic skiing, which separated around the 1920s when lifts meant skiers no longer had to climb back uphill.

Visit Norway describes kilometres upon kilometres of prepared cross-country tracks across mountain plateaus, with alpine slopes for families and more advanced skiers, plus snowkiting and guided ski touring. It mentions long seasons but gives no dates. The industry report named Scandinavia among the strong performers in 2023/24. We therefore treat the Nordic countries as a different kind of ski country, built around trails as much as lifts.

Planning a ski stay from an apartment base

Ski holidays are rarely a night or two. For a week or more, a base with a kitchen, laundry and space to dry boots makes a difference. Laundry in aparthotels explains what to expect for drying, weekly serviced apartments covers longer stays, and travelling with kids in aparthotels helps families with the logistics.

For people who go away for the whole winter, winter long stays for retirees looks at the format. If you snowboard, see countries for snowboarding. We do not state distances to lifts or pistes, so check the map for each listing before you book.