In spring, they arrive for the cherry blossoms. In fall, for the foliage tours.
Now, more travelers are booking winter trips to Japan, because the country’s repute 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 throughout the same period in 2018, based on the Japan National Tourism Organization.
Many are flocking to the powdery slopes of Niseko and Hakuba which, together with other skiing areas like Yamagata and Yuzawa, received a record variety of international tourists last winter, based on data published Thursday by Visa. Â
Visitors to Japan’s ski destinations exceeded pre-pandemic levels within the winter of 2023, based on Visa. It didn’t stop there — international arrivals climbed one other 50% this past ski season, it said.
Around 30% of holiday makers were from Australia, 20% from the USA, and 15% from Southeast Asia, based on Visa.
International visitors are also driving spending, with average day by day expenditures greater than triple that of local skiers, based on Visa’s data.
A drop in domestic demand
Yet many ski towns in Japan are struggling. Those without international crowds are grappling with falling domestic demand, which is down 75% for the reason that country’s skiing’s heyday within the early Nineties.
The variety 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, based on local media reports citing data from the Japan Productivity Center.
The variety of ski resorts in Japan has dropped too — from 1,669 in 1985 to 449 in 2021— based on the country’s largest English newspaper, The Japan Times. That features the once-hot Niigata prefecture, long considered certainly one of Japan’s premier ski spots.
Canadian Harvey Glick has been taking snowboarding trips to in Japan for nearly twenty years. He said abandoned ski resorts — and people “just hanging on” — will be seen in rural Honshu and Hokkaido.
“I’ve seen during the last 20 years an incredible change,” he said. Efforts at the moment are focused “across the foreign, international ski or snowboarding traveler, because they spend greater than the domestic ones, and so they’re really attempting to create this luxury brand of Japan — form of like Switzerland.”
A skier on the Niseko Tokyu Grand Hirafu ski resort in Kutchan, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, on Jan. 20, 2023. Niseko is viewed as successful story for an industry coping with decades-long decline from domestic skiers.
Noriko Hayashi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nowhere is that this more apparent than in Niseko and Hakuba, he said, which have luxury resorts staffed with English-speaking employees and slopes that elicit glowing word-of-mouth reviews.
Singapore resident Aman Narain said a advice from friends led him to book a visit to Hokkaido’s Club Med Tomamu for his family’s first skiing trip to Japan.
“Japan and Club Med make an ideal duo to learn how one can ski with soft, forgiving snow and an incredible set-up, especially for youths,” said Narain.
The resort’s rate included lift passes and ski lessons, plus equipment rental, “which was major,” he said.
Narain visited in January throughout the Lunar Latest 12 months holiday and estimates that, upon departing, 80% of the opposite hotel guests were from China.
Japan is now the highest ski destination for mainland Chinese travelers, “dethroning the USA which topped the list last 12 months,” based on Visa’s research.
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 was 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 turn out to be pretty upmarket. Nowadays you might want to pre-book your accommodation and restaurants as much as a 12 months upfront.”
But one thing hasn’t modified, she said: “The snow stays incredible.”
Mixed feelings
Visa’s data showed that just about half of all overseas visitors to Japan this past winter went to Niseko, based on Prateek Sanghi, the corporate’s head of consulting and analytics in Asia-Pacific. The favored ski resort area on Hokkaido also accounted for greater than half of overseas spending throughout the peak winter ski season, he said.
But Nagano’s Hakuba — which is usually known as “second Niseko” — can be gaining ground, Sanghi said.
“Hakuba is the fastest growing by overseas card spend year-on-year and accounts for roughly 35% of overseas visits,” he said.
That is partly why Glick now says he now avoids Niseko and Hakuba altogether.
“I don’t love the brand new character and culture that has evolved there,” he said. “I find it quite disturbing, because I believe they’re blocking out quite a lot of average … and even high-income people because prices are going through the roof.”
Responses to a Reddit post complaining about crowds at Niseko, as seen on March 31, 2025.
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 sort of queue lines or gates in place?! Only a free-for-all with people literally pushing their method to the front.”
In response, one other commenter wrote: “There are roughly 500 other ski resorts in Japan. Lots of them are practically empty.”
That is where Glick said he now goes to snowboard.
“I search out a few of the smaller mountains which have more of a Japanese feel to them,” he said. “You do not see some other foreigners.”
Influx of investment
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 preferred ski destination in Niigata prefecture. The company is in talks to reopen its fund to recent investors, Reuters reported in late March.
But not everyone seems to be applauding the thought of a “third” Niseko in Japan.
Locals worry that the roles and tourism dollars that the resort will generate will not be enough to offset spikes in real estate and food prices, and a deterioration of Japan’s long-revered cultural mores, based on Reuters. A now-viral video posted in February shows a Japanese man confronting an Australian tourist about smoking at the underside of a ski slope.
“Plenty of skiers from Japan are also struggling just a little bit because they see these towns becoming something apart from a Japanese ski resort.” said Glick.
For now, he said, he’s sticking with independent resorts, where English is not as widely spoken.
Plus, “a full day lift pass is like $35 dollars.”
— CNBC’s Bella Stoddart contributed to this report.
