The skiing economy is a typical experience economy, so understanding the experience of ski tourists is essential to the development of the destination. To enrich the tourism experience research in the emerging ski market, this paper studies the 7118 online reviews of beginner skiers by selecting the main ski resorts in China as a case study. The content analysis method and sentiment analysis based on the domain lexicon and custom rules are combined to explore the perception characteristics of the beginners from the two aspects of experience dimension and experience satisfaction. Three main results were found. (1) The five main dimensions that affect the ski tourism experience of beginners are interaction perception, price perception, reputation perception, risk perception and functional perception. (2) For beginners, skiing is the primary purpose of tourism instead of being the critical factor of the positive reviews. They pay more attention to the pleasure produced by interpersonal interactions. (3) From 2014/2015 ski season to 2010/2021 ski season, the positive sentiment of beginners had no obvious change, while the negative sentiment showed a continuous downward trend, and the negative sentiment was mainly distributed among reviews on price, low temperature and service. This paper not only expands the research perspective of ski tourism, but also provides managerial inspiration for ski destinations interested in attracting beginners from the emerging ski markets.

Under the initiative of “encouraging 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports” and the guidance of the ‘Evidence-based’ policy-making process, this study takes the Hierarchical Model of Leisure Constraints as the theoretical framework to empirically explore the constraints influencing the participation of residents in Southern China in ice and snow sports. After factor analysis, the constraint dimension of residents’ participation was obtained, and the constraints of participants and non-participants were evaluated and compared by Propensity Score Matching (PSM). The results indicate that Chengdu residents have potential interest in and demand for winter sports, and the constraint dimensions are: facilities and services, companions, time, and personal feelings. The predisposition scores of the experimental group and the control group revealed that the constraints on interest, relevant knowledge and skills, and personal feelings of the participating group were significantly lower than those of the non-participating group, while the other constraints were not significant. We suggest that efforts should be made to increase the effective supply according to local conditions in order to reduce structural constraints, and the social attributes should be integrated into ice and snow sports to resolve the inter-personal constraints.

The successful bid for the Beijing Winter Olympics has brought historic opportunities for the development of ice and snow tourism in China. An index system for the evaluation of tourist satisfaction in ice and snow tourism destinations was constructed from the target layer-factor layer-index layer approach in this paper. Taking tourists with ice and snow tourism experience as the research object, and integrating a questionnaire survey and the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) method, a total of 840 valid questionnaires were collected to assess the satisfaction of tourists in snow and ice tourism destinations, and the promotion model of tourist satisfaction in ice and snow tourism destinations was put forward. This process led to three main results. (1) Ice and snow tourists in China are characterized as young and better-educated, with college students aged 19 to 25 as the main consumer group. More than 70% of ice and snow tourists are pretty satisfied with the current development of ice and snow destinations in China, and are willing to participate again. (2) Other than “ice and snow souvenirs”, tourists’ perceptions of importance are all higher than the level of perceived satisfaction, and the importance values of the 13 indicators including “Scenic spot security” and “Diversity of ice and snow entertainment and sports” are especially high, showing that tourists have high expectations and demands of the destinations. However, the perceived satisfaction level of tourists for all indexes is generally low, mostly at the general satisfaction level, indicating that ice and snow tourism destinations have only partially met the demands of ice and snow tourists, and there is still much room for improvement. (3) After IPA analysis, five suggestions for improving the satisfaction of tourists in ice and snow tourism destinations were put forward, including diversification of the tourism business model, construction of tourism facilities, a market diversified cultivation model, a humanized mode of tourism service and a refined management model. The results of this study will help to enrich the theory of ice and snow tourist satisfaction and promote the high-quality development of China's ice and snow tourism in the post-Winter Olympics era.

As an emerging mountain vacation tourism product, ski tourism is becoming increasingly important in the domestic tourism market. As an important theory for studying the quality of consumer experience, perceived value has been widely employed in tourism research in recent years, and improving the ski tourism experience value has become the focus of competition among ski tourism destinations. Taking the ski tourists in Chongli District of Zhangjiakou as an example, 305 valid questionnaires were collected by using online and offline methods. Based on the theory of perceived value, this paper adopted principal component analysis and cluster analysis to conduct a preliminary study of ski tourism experience and market segmentation. In addition, this paper examined the differences in demographic and behavioral characteristics of different types of ski tourists. This study finds that: (1) The perceived value of ski tourism experience includes four dimensions: facility value, perceived price, safety value and service value. (2) Using the perceived value to segment ski tourists, three different customer segments are identified: comfort-pursuant, price-sensitive and safety-oriented. (3) There are significant differences in key metrics, such as number of visits and stay time, among different types of ski tourists according to their demographic characteristics such as gender, age, monthly income, and behavioral characteristics. These results reveal the different dimensions of the perceived value of ski tourism experience and determine the market segments and characteristics of ski tourists. Developing a corresponding marketing strategy based on the different market segments can better promote the perceived value of ski tourists, and ultimately strengthen the competitiveness of the enterprises.