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While the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games is still six years away, it has sparked great enthusiasm among the public for ice sports, which have been boosting tourism and the ice sports industry.
Chongli county in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, co-host of the Winter Olympics, pocketed direct revenue of 1.4 billion yuan ($210 million) from more than 2 million tourists in the 2015-2016 ski season, said Han Zirong, secretary-general of the Beijing Organising Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
The growth rate doubled that of the past years, she added. "As a regular visitor to ski resorts in Chongli, I have seen tourists increase sharply," said Qi, a ski fan who wanted only his surname used.
"Many tourists even came all the way from South China," Qi said.
A high-speed railway linking Beijing with Zhangjiakou will be completed in 2019, shortening the travel time to 50 minutes from an average four hours. Convenient transportation is expected to bring more tourists to the county, Han said.
She said the Winter Olympics will "greatly boost consumption" in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, and investment in infrastructure for the Olympics will also fuel GDP growth in these regions. "The development of the sports, cultural and tourism industries in the regions is expected to create 600,000 new jobs," she said.
The number of participants in ice sports in China has been on the rise as well after Beijing was awarded the bid.
Han said 30 provincial-level regions across the country hosted ice sports events in the 2015-2016 ski season. Beijing and Zhangjiakou have seen ice sports participants grow by 30 percent to 6.8 million during that time.
The nation will encourage 300 million people to participate in winter sports by 2022, Han said.
According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports, revenue generated by the ice sports industry is estimated to jump from its current 320 billion yuan to 400 billion in 2022.
The Olympic Village in Beijing's Yanqing county will be constructed in accordance with the standards of three-star to five-star hotels to serve the Alpine skiing and bobsleigh/luge events that are going to be hosted there, and for the future development of the winter sports industry, Han said.
The competition site will be transformed into a park themed with ice and snow, which will also operate as a retreat during summer, she added.
