2022-02-16
David Guigaz
Mountain Project Director APAC, Club Med
It is my pleasure to participate in today’s summit in Beidahu. In a few weeks, the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games, a great sporting event for China, will open. Here I would like to share with you the vision of Club Med in terms of its development in China and customer experience.
Winter sports is in constant progression in China. Chinese government has formulated the Winter Sports Development Plan for 2016-2025, which is definitely a very powerful boost for China and sets the goal of having 300 million winter enthusiasts by 2025.
Club Med has launched a series of activities to promote snow and ice sports on campus. The future skiers are the young generation, and we will organize some special winter camps or training activities for the students. We have carried out a lot of such business in France, but China enjoys the advantage of development on scale all the more. I believe China can make headway in developing the ice and snow industries in the next 20 years. China is now proactively developing skiing sports the big cities. Over the past five years, many cities have opened simulation ski resorts. After having skiing experience in this way, people will be more willing to participate in outdoor skiing.
According to market data analysis, 50% of skiers are young people, the generation living in the digital age who engage in skiing through digital means. China now has about 50 million skiers, including 3 million very experienced ones, who ski at least 1-2 times a day on average. About 70% of the skiers are repeating customers, who will ski more than 10 times a year, and who are also very willing to invest; over 50% spend more than RMB10,000 per year on ski equipment; 30% of them travel to ski clubs for practice. And this is a growing trend in China. In the process of skiing, people socialize and learn from each other. Today the ski academy is established to attract young people.
China is a big ski market which needs qualified ski instructors, and here is our point. We check 65% of the beginners want to use the service of the ski instructor. In future more and more skier in China want instructions, and more and more international personnel will work as ski instructors in China. The work of ski instructors will become more and more professional and international.
We have found that repeating customers expect more and more, and in order to meet their growing expectations, ski resorts must improve service and diversify their products. To meet the growing needs of people regarding the product variety, service quality and professionalism, we must continuously improve our quality of service by providing a wide range of teaching and coaching services.
We are positioned as a family oriented brand. In 2018 we decided to launch a premium ski project to provide customized services. ESS is a 75 years old brand, committed to teaching the kids. We have delivered a quality ski teaching product which comes in 15 levels. Up to now, all the consumers and customers are very satisfied with the product, so we see the rates of returning customers in China also keep going up. We want to give the beginners, whether they are snowboarders or skiers, professional skiing skills and knowledge, and we also want to have some Chinese ski instructors who while improving their professional skills can use corresponding ski products provided by us in a targeted way.
When people come to the mountains for skiing, they may expect a variety of activities. When the family comes to a hotel for a ski vacation, we can see that mostly they come for the kids, but parents can experience some activities as well. So this is why we are trying to develop other on-the-side activities like what we do at Changbai Mountains, where in addition to skiing tourists can experience other activities on the ice. Our business in China is growing very fast; we have opened two new resorts this year and hope to develop even better in the future.
Thank you!