In 2026, Brands Should Invest More in Mountains
A significant opportunity at the onset of ecological collapse
In ‘What Matters’, Matter shares its insight on the most pressing culture and consumer behaviour shifts it is analysing in its strategic output which will impact luxury in the near-to-middle term. We conclude with ‘Dark Matter’, a weekly look at the strange, curious, and disconcerting news that will influence the evolution of our industry.
This week: why and how brands should be investing in snow strategies to reach UHNWIs.
Expenditure on skiing-related tourism is expected to reach $5.7 billion by 2027, with a large proportion of growth stemming from China, where the sport’s popularity is rising fast.
Historically the preserve of the elite — globally, snow-based activities are only becoming more popular, more expensive and more aspirational. Perhaps part of skiing’s growing appeal is an emerging sense of ephemerality. All major skiing destinations are predicted to see severe drops in snow days, as per New Scientist. In fact, one in eight ski resorts worldwide could have no snow at all by 2100.
Inconsistent conditions are making it harder to capture and broadcast a perfect ski day of crisp blue skies, generous powder and empty slopes. The social cachet of those who can is rising.
As a result, although it’s terrifyingly downhill for snow long-term, in the near and mid-term, luxury brands should expand, iterate, and invest in their snow and mountain strategies — focusing on clienteling, activations, and product.
Now, as the European, Chinese, and North American ski seasons come to a close, Matter breaks down why luxury brands should invest in snow strategies for 2026.
Less Snow, More People
Snow’s long-term prospects are terrible, but consumer investment in skiing is booming.
In 2022-2023, 65 million people visited American ski resorts — the largest number ever, according to the National Ski Areas Association, an industry group. In 2023-2024, 60.1 million visitors were recorded.
Vail — now a company and a major player in the market — owns 42 resorts and counting, including around 25 “feeder” resorts that nurture new skiers on the East Coast, with the intention of tempting them to invest eventually in visiting the bigger ski slopes out West. The company’s non-cancellable ‘Epic’ season passes, which grant access to all resorts, cost $1,051 for adults and $537 for children.
In 2024, Epic passes were purchased by over 2 million people (a small drop from 2023’s numbers). On the most popular days, Vail has to ration the number of lift tickets available, “drastically raising the cost of things like parking, so as to stop the crowds,” according to The Economist. To appease locals, black-out days are also adopted in some resorts.
There are now over 700 skiing resorts in China, with the government reporting that over 12.8 million people participated in some amount of skiing in 2024 – a 14.49% increase compared to the previous year. In Japan, foreign visitors rose 33% this past winter from pre-pandemic levels, according to data from Visa.
Skiing hubs like Niseko and Hakuba, along with Yamagata and Yuzawa, received a record number of international tourists last winter. Some 10.5 million visitors arrived from December 2024 to February 2025. Visa found 30% of visitors were from Australia, 20% from the United States, and 15% from Southeast Asia. China, surprisingly, was just 5%. Matter expects this number to grow.
In an era of increasing wealth polarisation, investing in snow strategies gives brands access to customer cohorts with a high density of price-insensitive consumers. Overall, the cost of skiing in Europe has risen by 34.8% above inflation since 2015, with Swiss, Austrian, and Italian resorts experiencing the highest increases as per data compiled by Laurent Vanat. The average day pass for Europe’s ski resorts cost €66.46 in 2023 — 24.7% more expensive than before 2020’s Covid-19 pandemic.
Own The Slopes
In the U.S., skiing gets elevated — higher and higher.
In the face of warmer winters, the combination of snow’s rarity and ski resorts’ attempts to increase profits is leading to a surge in privatised and elevated skiing. In the United States skiing is increasingly beyond the budgets of the merely affluent: the apex is now an UHNWI’s game.
Deuxmoi recently reported that Taylor Swift and footballer boyfriend Travis Kelce were spotted on a skiing holiday at the Yellowstone Club, which “provided a peaceful environment for the couple, with no one bothering them”. On a smartphone-obsessed planet it goes without saying that privacy is a luxury nonpareil. Now, skiing is also undergoing an elevation in positioning to meet that desire among its core base of elite clientele.
Last month, GQ reported that there are now more than half a dozen private ski clubs in the U.S., some of which require personal vetting as well as millions of dollars. Netflix ex-CEO Reed Hastings, who has created a private enclave on Powder Mountain in Utah (entry fee: a plot of land for minimum $2 million, plus annual fees up to $100,000) told the Financial Times: “In Europe the idea of private skiing is just awful, but there’s no social stigma here and the market is so under-served.”
As snow melts around the world and mountains are increasingly packed with daytrippers on affordable ski passes, demand is only going to grow amongst HNWIs for these privatised experiences.
Montana’s Yellowstone Club, where Swift and Kelce enjoyed their vacation, has 864 members and describes itself as the “world’s only private ski and golf community.” The combined wealth of its membership is estimated at over $290 billion and the club is dubbed “too expensive” for celebrities by one member. To join, you must be a home-owner on the mountain – prices for a 1-bed condo start around $5 million, while some houses can reach north of $30 million – with members then paying an alleged $500k initiation fee and $60k+ per annum in fees.
While private skiing may be further off in Europe, it is also seeing the advent of more consistently elevated experiences, far removed from the once middle-class-muddle of much of the Alps. In 2019, only 5% of clients who rented chalets in the Alps also hired a “ski butler” or concierge. Now, it’s 20%. “All companies selling high-end services in the mountains have seen a surge over the past few years,” one trip planner told the Wall Street Journal.
In an interconnected culturesphere, the more private, more exclusive, and more inaccessible elite skiing’s resorts become, the greater their allure to a jaded, over-informed consumer cohort of HNWIs, UHNWIs, and social media audiences.
Peak Stores Not Peak Product
Mountain-attire is getting more fashionable, but for technical-clout it’s niche or nothing.
While the skiing opportunity is nothing new, it has changed. Luxury brands from Jacquemus to Chanel release skiwear collections each year, with the former’s boutique in Courchevel rumoured to be adding an ice-skating rink. And, indeed, that is part of the point of retail presence in the mountains: remaining top of mind while your clients are on top of the world.
It is important to have or nurture a sufficiently authentic connection to a mountain lifestyle to explain a brand’s presence in it. But attempting to telegraph authority as a technical outfitter for mountain-sports, even if collaborations or investments have made any such claims viable, is ill-advised.
Loro Piana, for example, has released a snowboard, handcrafted in Japan. Priced at $4,775, this “exquisite snowboard blends the finest wood with Titanal to create a construction that is both incredibly stable and remarkably flexible.” It is beautiful and no doubt excellently conceived of and made. It is also unlikely they intended to sell more than a handful to pre-identified clients.
But, the fact remains, in a culturesphere where technical, niche expertise is increasingly prioritised and celebrated across consumer channels, brands can’t be taken seriously on the piste. This diminishes the value proposition of any investment into technical kit rather than mountain-attire. With elevation comes a greater expectation of in-the-know skiing-culture signifiers. At the top of the totem pole, Van Deer, Völkl, Nordica, Blizzard, Lacroix, and even Rossignol and Salomon create some of the finest technical skiing hardware in the world.
Far better to stick to clothes and accessories. There is a growing opportunity in products designed for the mountain-lifestyle. A societal shift around skiing has pushed it out of its family hand-me-downs era and old-money revelling in its non-commerciality. This has unlocked the perceived customer need for trend-based, or seasonal-specific mountain attire, or at the very least, the need to not repeat all ski-wear season-over-season as was the case previously. But more importantly, alpaca for après.
The Moncler Grenoble activation in Courchevel did well to recognise the increased sense of occasion now prevalent in the zeitgeist on the mountains. Given the extremity of wealth polarisation in the luxury consumer cohorts, its products might be better suited to the middle-income cultural verticals in China however (see below).
More broadly, data compiled by Snowsports Industries America found that over a third of winter sports enthusiasts reported skiing and snowboarding at resorts more frequently this season. Within a specific sample-set, 37% reported buying more snowsports gear and apparel this season.
In terms of product trends, 79% of participants say it’s important for gear to be made sustainably, with 28% actively purchasing sustainably-made products this past season. Kim Kardashian rewore Victoria Beckham’s 2000s Chanel ski-suit in 2024, and Farfetch is selling a pre-owned 1990-2000s Sport Line Chanel ski mask balaclava for £2,514, down from £2,793.
And beyond the elite, elite-emulators are keen to spend. The bars of Big Sky, Snowmass, Vail, Breckenridge, Park City Mountain, and Deer Valley are dotted with people dressed to ski but not in possession of a lift pass. They’re not there to ski.
The commercial opportunity is such that Zara has released a skiing collection with no defensible technical-materialisation for the past three years, seeking to tap into the look of the skiing sort. For luxury, the status signifiers that denote the real deal first-lift-in, last-lift-out set will be required to distinguish status-sensitive skiers from those playing dress up.
“Ice and Snow Are as Valuable as Gold and Silver”
In China, skiing merges personal development with party approval.
Over in China, Xi Jinping remarked at the opening of the Ninth Asian Winter Games in Harbin in February that “ice and snow are as valuable as gold and silver.” His comments aren’t quite the exaggeration they seem. The popularity of the sport is now so great that Jilin, a city in northeast China, is turning itself into a year-round ski resort.
Indeed, China has quickly developed from a country not known for its ski culture to boasting more ski resorts than any other country – 719 in total. In China, the opportunity is more democratic than in the U.S., but it’s also more nuanced.
The narrative around skiing in the country is markedly different compared to Europe or the United States. As Arc'teryx's 2023 documentary, “The Taoism of Ski Mountaineering”, demonstrated, skiing is associated with values including reverence for nature, embracing freedom, and assuming responsibility for oneself. This is augmented by broader societal shifts. Recent years have seen a growing cohort of young Chinese move to second, third-tier cities, and even villages, for a slower pace of life.
The rising cost of living in major hubs, and improved infrastructure in rural areas, have upped momentum. With Chinese consumers looking to mountain regions and smaller cities for relaxation as well as permanent relocation, slow travel is big news in China. This bubbles up to “lǚ jū” — the term for journeying to a fulfilled state, and adopting a nomadic lifestyle. It is within this context that the skiing opportunity in China should be viewed.
With state-backing, skiing is now both a patriotic expression of fealty and an aspirational leisure activity. When it comes to spending, one should point out the competition stemming from the rise of niche brands (xiǎozhòng pǐnpái), and a broader desire to wear China-designed, China-made clothing. But product is not the only way for brands to tap into skiing in the zeitgeist.
Entering a Winter Olympic year, the 25th edition of the games will be held in Milan-Cortina. Though viewing numbers are dwarfed by the summer games, the Winter Olympics will spike interest in communities committed to the sport and provide ample sponsorship opportunities.
The Chinese public’s reliable interest and dependable exaltation of sporting heroes will unlock some new ambassadors to engage. And ski-stars are not as niche as you may think. Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics in 2022, so the ground work has been laid.
Born in San Francisco to a first generation Chinese immigrant mother and an American father, Eileen Feng Gu, also known by her Chinese name Gu Ailing (谷爱凌) is the second-highest earning female athlete in the world in 2023 according to Forbes. At age 18, Gu became the youngest Olympic champion in freestyle skiing after winning gold medals in big air and halfpipe, and a silver medal in slopestyle, at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Mikaela Pauline Shiffrin is an American World Cup alpine skier who has the most World Cup wins of any alpine skier ever and became the first woman to make over a million dollars in a professional Alpine season. Including Barilla, Adidas, Land Rover, Longines, Visa, and Grubhub, Shiffrin has 14 major sponsors already – but she and skiers are still largely untapped by luxury.
What Matters
The Race to Rich Mountain: Private skiing is growing in popularity amongst the UHNW community that luxury has been courting so slavishly. Price insensitivity doesn't even cover it when it comes to the upper limits of what could be charged for the right products.
Patriotism and Powder: Chinese skiers are more cerebrally minded, with a trip to the mountains conveying more than just fresh air and post-able content. The Five Great Mountains (and particularly Mount Tai) have been associated with Taoism for millennia, and the Chinese Communist Party has made an explicit instruction that the nation engage with winter sports to help regenerate the northern economy. Patriotism and spiritual sensitivity could help mountain activations go stratospheric in the country.
Dark Matter
“European beauty groups including L’Oréal, the world’s biggest, have lobbied the EU to remove American cosmetics from the bloc’s list of potential trade retaliation targets, warning that the move could trigger reprisals against one of the region’s biggest sectors.” – The Financial Times
Nicolas Hieronimus, L’Oréal’s chief executive, said he and an alliance of 15 beauty chiefs called Value of Beauty warned EU officials. “My only ask to the people I’ve met [in Brussels] is to say: look at the balance of trade and don’t put a red flag on a category where we have more to lose than to win,” Hieronimus told the Financial Times.
Back in September, Trump threatened Donald Trump agricultural manufacturer John Deer with a 200% tariff if the company moved production to Mexico as planned. It seems that for this government, there’s no cap on retaliation and punitive measures.
“The beauty industry's impact included a robust contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP), which stood at $308.7 billion and $2.6 billion trade surplus.” – The Beauty of Impact Report 2025 by the Personal Care Council
As analysed in last week's Substack, much of the European luxury industry could be targeted through specific and siloed measures if desired — down to an individual company or brand. Read more on whether Trump could force luxury to reject DEI here.