French winter sports industry shares expertise with China ahead of Olympics

Companies are seeing an opportunity to invest as more Chinese people take up the sport

PARIS - With China gearing up for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, three-time host France plans to advance skiing and tourism development with the world's most populous country.

POMA Vice-President Fabien Felli said: "The Chinese skiing industry is a new and promising market, and France can enjoy a lot of partnership opportunities with China."

POMA, a worldwide manufacturer for cable car technology, has been in the Chinese market for almost 35 years with around 100 employees.

"It was very important that we didn't wait for the Olympic Games to come to China," Felli said. "I'm always afraid of short-term solutions. We consider POMA as a long-term partner of Chinese industry."

That was echoed by Benoit Robert, director of Mountain Cluster, an organization guiding French companies in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region to find opportunities with Chinese counterparts.

"The Winter Olympics will arrive very quickly. You cannot imagine how fast it is coming, so everything has to be done now," said Robert.

Qi Hong, president of the Thaiwoo Ski Resort in Chongli, insisted that winter sports cooperation between China and France is to step up.

"Our foundation for development is different. They have developed for more than a century, while we just kicked it off, meaning that they can offer us much help," Qi said.

"Moreover, the Chinese skiing market may possess the most potential around the globe in terms of population size and natural conditions."

Cooperation is not limited to that between corporations. Mutual territory partnerships have enjoyed a boom recently. The Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region and the city of Chambery signed friendship agreements with counterparts, Hebei Province and the city of Zhangjiakou last November.

"We work on both institutional and business partnerships. They go together and make a good balance. The territory is our best ambassador, as it's the territory that hosts big ski resorts," Robert added.

For Robert, the Winter Olympics will accelerate market development. "We have much experience in France, especially with big events," said Robert. "For us, big events like the Winter Olympics pushed the development of ski businesses, and offered opportunities to push mountain tourism development in the valley."

Felli emphasized that cooperation between France and China has to be a long-term goal, not just limited to the Winter Olympics.

"The Winter Olympics is an amazing worldwide event, but normally it's around two weeks for the Olympics and two weeks for the Paralympics; a very short period of time. We have to consider the long-term development of ski resorts, which took many years in France," he said.

Noticing that "the Chinese market is going up", Robert also shed light on the significance of a long-term approach.

"A short-term vision doesn't work and will be bad. It's not a commercial success. Therefore, the most important thing is to create the market - and there are a lot of things to do," he observed.

The MND Group started business in China 15 years ago, offering snowmaking machines, ropeways and outdoor leisure activities.

The group has a joint venture based in Zhangjiakou, one of the host cities for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

MND has witnessed their Chinese market turnover, which accounted for 2-3 percent several years ago, jump to 25 percent. China became the group's largest market in 2018.

"China is an emerging and booming market for us," said MND's business development director Martin Francou.

"We are happy with what we saw in the last few years, where Chinese and French governments have talked a lot on how to develop some synergy." Developing the skiing market meant creating a better image for the sport. Earlier this year, famous resort brand Club Med partnered with a renowned French ski school to open its first ski academy in China.

"The first time when I went to China more than 10 years ago, it was considered an extreme sport," recalled Francou.

"It's not really the case now. The Chinese have realized that it's an activity that can be done safely by the general public."

Compagnie des Alpes is a leading European company with a history spanning 30 years in site operation and equipment installation.

Jean-Marc Farini, the CDA's international projects director for mountain resorts, said that the company decided to increase its international footprint eight years ago as the volume of skiers in western Europe and the United States was stagnating.

In contrast, China is now one of the main reserves of new skiers in the world.

For Francou, "there is always space for improvement, especially in a ski market born only a few years ago." Farini added that China-France cooperation in winter sports "is always excellent and can be even better".

"French expertise in skiing is quite unique. The French model of development in the skiing industry is based on state and government to promote the sport. We have a lot of similarities between what made France a success on the mountains and what we can see in China," he said.

"The two models are wonderfully compatible and I'm optimistic about it," Farini emphasized. "It takes quite a long time to get the benefit. We are not just interested in short-time results; we prefer to envisage long-term effects."

Xinhua - China Daily

(China Daily 03/26/2019 page7)