Essay: Snow Tourism

Since there is no established definition of snow tourism, the definition of tourism will be considered and further enhanced to define snow tourism. Tourism is defined as “a source of income for a state/country or business based on peoples travel habits/patterns/purchases” (Radford). From this definition of tourism, it can be said that snow tourism is a source of income for a country or business based on peoples travel habits/ patterns/purchases to areas that receive snow. Snow tourism includes a wide range of activities ranging from buying habits like warm clothes, sports equipment and etc to snow sports like skiing, ice hockey, ice-skating and etc to special events like Olympics and ice/figure skating. Snow tourism is often interrelated and synonymous with winter tourism and will used as such in the paper.

Snow Tourism can be traced back to the late 19th century “initially at the Swiss village of Zermatt (Valais), and St Moritz in 1864” (Wikipedia), when the elite British class sought some recreational activities during winters. “The first packaged winter sports holidays took place in 1902 at Adelboden, Switzerland”(Wikipedia).

Areas that are mountainous and receive heavy snow are all famous for snow tourism. The fun ski and & snow festival in arranged in Korea since 1998 is a famous snow event of Asia and many tourists come to visit from areas that have no snow. Other areas that are famous for snow tourism are Switzerland, “Patagonia region in Chile and Argentina attract thousands of tourists every year”(Wikipedia).  Many countries that are deprieved of snow have created artifical snow parks and places so the residents can enjoy snow, one such place famous for the creation of such places in Dubai.