Is Park City the largest ski resort in the world?

Interesting question, but first, let’s agree what is meant by “big”? Is it the total land area, the number of permanent residents, the number of visitor beds or the number of skier’s visit or skier-days? 

When we talking about ski towns or ski resorts, I would opt for the latter, namely the skier-days count. Recently it was confirmed that Park City hosted 2.5 million skier visits during the 2021-2022 ski season. 

This was 250,000 less than I had speculated back in June of this year, but still quite impressive. This in fact is up to par with La Plagne that, until now, was considered the most widely visited ski resort in the world and that stands today just shy of Park City’s current number. 

Additionally, it must be said that La Plagne is spread over four small towns (Aime-La Plagne, La Plagne-Tarentaise, Champagny-en-Vanoise and Bozel) whereas Park City is one larger ski town. In North America, Whistler, Vail and Breckenridge are the next ski towns after Park City receiving between 1.5 and 2 million visits per season. 

On the top 30 rankings showed, many resorts are interconnected, which means that, unlike Park City that is what can be called one self-standing community, they’re groupings of individual ski towns and this way of categorizing them is “fudging” the order, so we’re not always comparing apple to oranges. 

Likewise, Park City is host to 3 different ski areas: Park City Mountain, Deer Valley Resort and Woodward snowpark that, unlike its European counterparts, are self-standing and aren't connected.