The world’s second largest indoor ski area, Guangzhou Snow World in China, is reported to have had 6,500 skiers visits in a single day in May, believed to be a world record for indoor snow centres.

6,500 skiers is also more than all but the very largest conventional ski areas are likely to see in a day, and more than some very small centres record all season.

The centre, which only opened in 2019, is one of six indoor-snow centres operated by the Beijing-Sunac group, with more under construction.  It has 56,000 square metres of indoor snow space, divided in to five slopes with a combined length of around 950 metres.

They also own the world’s largest in the North-eastern city of Harbin, as well as centres in Chengdu,  Wuxi, Kunming, and Chongqing.

The Sunac group is reported to have seen a 166% jump in revenue in the first half of 2021 from a year earlier to about 2.61 billion yuan ($404 million) with analysts crediting its snow business as the main sector driving the growth of the group’s culture and tourism segment, which also includes malls, water sports venues and some high-end hotels.

China is reported to be seeing a big jump in winter sports business with the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing five-months away.

A 2019 report released by the China Tourism Academy says the country is expected to have 340 million ice and snow tourists spending about 680 billion yuan in the 2021-22 winter season.

That surpasses the 300 million people target set by the country’s president Xi Jinping in 2015 as the number of people he said he hoped would try ice and snow sports ahead of the Olympics.

 The Chinese government is also reported to have pledged to make the country’s ski industry worth about 1 trillion yuan ($155 billion US) by 2025.