Winter brings record number of international tourists

In spring, they come for the cherry blossoms. In fall, for the foliage tours.

Now, more travelers are booking winter trips to Japan, as the country’s reputation as a world-class skiing destination continues to lure visitors from Asia-Pacific and beyond.

Foreign visitors to Japan rose 33% this past winter from pre-pandemic levels. Some 10.5 million visitors arrived from December 2024 to February 2025, up from 7.9 million during the same period in 2018, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

Many are flocking to the powdery slopes of Niseko and Hakuba which, along with other skiing areas like Yamagata and Yuzawa, received a record number of international tourists last winter, according to a report published Thursday by Visa.  

Visitors to Japan’s ski destinations exceeded pre-pandemic levels in the winter of 2023, according to Visa. It didn’t stop there — international arrivals climbed another 50% this past ski season, it said.

Around 30% of visitors were from Australia, 20% from the United States, and 15% from Southeast Asia, according to Visa.

International visitors are also driving spending, with average daily expenditures more than triple that of local skiers, according to Visa’s report.

Yet many ski towns in Japan are struggling. Those without international crowds are grappling with falling domestic demand, which is down 75% since the country’s skiing’s heyday in the early 1990s.

The number of skiers and snowboarders in Japan fell from 18.6 million in 1993 to 4.6 million in 2023, as Japan’s population aged, birth rates declined and younger generations found other ways to spend their free time, according to local media reports citing data from the Japan Productivity Center.

The number of ski resorts in Japan has dropped too — from 1,669 in 1985 to 449 in 2021— according to the country’s largest English newspaper, The Japan Times. That includes the once-hot Niigata prefecture, long considered one of Japan’s premier ski spots.

Canadian Harvey Glick has been taking snowboarding trips to in Japan for nearly two decades. He said abandoned ski resorts — and those “just hanging on” — can be seen in rural Honshu and Hokkaido.

“I’ve seen over the last 20 years an incredible change,” he said. Efforts are now focused “around the foreign, international ski or snowboarding traveler, because they spend more than the domestic ones, and they’re really trying to create this luxury brand of Japan — kind of like Switzerland.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Niseko and Hakuba, he said, which have luxury resorts staffed with English-speaking workers and slopes that elicit glowing word-of-mouth reviews.

Singapore resident Aman Narain said a recommendation from friends led him to book a trip to Hokkaido’s Club Med Tomamu for his family’s first skiing trip to Japan.

“Japan and Club Med make a perfect duo to learn how to ski with soft, forgiving snow and an amazing set-up, especially for kids,” said Narain.

The resort’s rate included lift passes and ski lessons, plus equipment rental, “which was major,” he said.

Narain visited in January during the Lunar New Year holiday and estimates that, upon departing, 80% of the other hotel guests were from China.

Japan is now the top ski destination for mainland Chinese travelers, “dethroning the United States which topped the list last year,” according to Visa’s report.

South African Cindy de Oude, who first went to Niseko 22 years ago, said she and her family have been regular visitors for the past decade.

“There has been an explosion, since Covid, in Hong Kong clientele,” she said.

Prices have gone up, she said, as have the caliber of hotels and restaurants. “The restaurant scene has become pretty upmarket. These days you need to pre-book your accommodation and restaurants up to a year in advance.”

But one thing hasn’t changed, she said: “The snow remains fantastic.”

Visa’s data showed that nearly half of all overseas visitors to Japan this past winter went to Niseko, according to Prateek Sanghi, the company’s head of consulting and analytics in Asia-Pacific. The popular ski resort area on Hokkaido also accounted for more than half of overseas spending during the peak winter ski season, he said.

But Nagano’s Hakuba — which is sometimes referred to as “second Niseko” — is also gaining ground, Sanghi said.

“Hakuba is the fastest growing by overseas card spend year-on-year and accounts for approximately 35% of overseas visits,” he said.

This is partly why Glick now says he now avoids Niseko and Hakuba altogether.

“I don’t like the new character and culture that has evolved there,” he said. “I find it quite disturbing, because I think they’re blocking out a lot of average … or even high-income people because prices are going through the roof.”

Many online expressed lament over the resort towns’ popularity too. A Reddit poster in January complained about Niseko, writing: “Giant lines for Hirafu gondolas (expected) with absolutely no type of queue lines or gates in place?! Just a free-for-all with people literally pushing their way to the front.”

In response, another commenter wrote: “There are approximately 500 other ski resorts in Japan. Many of them are practically empty.”

This is where Glick said he now goes to snowboard.

“I seek out some of the smaller mountains that have more of a Japanese feel to them,” he said. “You don’t see any other foreigners.”

Rising international interest to ski in Japan is fueling an influx of investment, as foreigners scoop up homes and pour money into resort developments.

In 2023, Singapore-based Patience Capital Group announced a $1.42 billion mega-resort in Myoko Kogen, a popular ski destination in Niigata prefecture. The company is in talks to reopen its fund to new investors, Reuters reported in late March.

But not everyone is applauding the idea of a “third” Niseko in Japan.

Locals worry that the jobs and tourism dollars that the resort will generate may not be enough to offset spikes in real estate and food prices, and a deterioration of Japan’s long-revered cultural mores, according to Reuters. A now-viral video posted in February shows a Japanese man confronting an Australian tourist about smoking at the bottom of a ski slope.

“A lot of skiers from Japan also are struggling a little bit because they see these towns becoming something other than a Japanese ski resort.” said Glick.

For now, he said, he’s sticking with independent resorts, where English isn’t as widely spoken.

Plus, “a full day lift pass is like $35 dollars.”

— CNBC’s Bella Stoddart contributed to this report.