Can skiing travel well?

In fact, the real question should be: Are skiers willing to travel far?

I still remember when I first skied at Park City, they were trail signs in Japanese to translate the existing signs in English.

At the time, the entire Japan was crazy about skiing and was a few years away from falling into the financial abyss that knocked the country out in the late 80s. All Nippon Airways was planning to bring skiers to Utah, to expose them to the joys of the Greatest Snow on Earth.

When I still was in France, its brand-new ski resorts from the 70s were betting that American living on the East Coast wouldn't hesitate much to jump on a plane and patronize their new places.

It sort of happened for a few years, but didn't develop. Instead, long distance skiers found that between jet-lag, change in altitude, not to mention a different culture they were too many “moving parts” negatively adding to the logistic challenge that skiing already is.

Later, American skiers started to shorten their stays and continent-hoping, just to ski, became a thing of the past. Well today, Aussies continue to ski in America (they generally stay 2 weeks), Japan and even Europe during their summer, while some Americans and Chinese come over to Japan, but these actions by a few are not making a huge difference in terms of skier-visits.

It simply is to demanding to travel overseas in order to ski. This only seems to compute in the minds of some imaginative marketing executives.

Right, everyone is crying for simplification when it comes to skiing and these observations make me doubt that the resort-hoping promoted by Vail Resorts and Alterra are going in that direction and, as a result, are with us to stay...