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www.travelweekly-asia.com | 3 Published by NORTHSTAR TRAVEL MEDIA SINGAPORE PTE LTD SINGAPORE 91 Bencoolen Street, #05-08 Sunshine Plaza, Singapore 189652 • TEL: +65-6801-0450 FAX: +65-6801-0469 BEIJING Room 024, Building 8, Qijiayuan Diplomatic Compound, No.9 Jianguomenwai Street, Chaoyang District 100600, China • TEL: +8610-8532 3611 | FAX: +8610-8532 5293 SHANGHAI Room 2553, The Headquarters Building, No.168 Central XiZhang Road, Shanghai 200001, China • TEL: +8621-5179 8360 | FAX: +8621-5179 8360 Travel Weekly Asia is published on a monthly basis by Northstar Travel Media Singapore Pte Ltd. Located at 91 Bencoolen Street, #05-08 Sunshine Plaza, Singapore 189652. All rights reserved. Volume 9 Issue 2 Please address all subscription mail to the above address, Fax +852 3020 5794, or email travelweeklyasia@asia-ad.net. 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Kemp CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Lisa Cohen PRESIDENT, TRAVEL GROUP Robert G. Sullivan EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL MEDIA Thomas Cintorino EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT/GROUP PUBLISHER David Blansfield SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Lori Cioffi SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Arnie Weissmann SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES Janine L. Bavoso SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT & PRODUCTION Roberta Muller VICE PRESIDENT, INFORMATION PRODUCTS GROUP Sheila Rice VICE PRESIDENT, IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS Rich Mastropietro VICE PRESIDENT, DATABASE PRODUCTS Elizabeth Koesser TRAVEL WEEKLY EVENTS PRESIDENT, TRAVEL GROUP Robert G. Sullivan SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS, TRAVEL GROUP Alicia Evanko-Lewis TALKING POINT Ian Jarrett is a widely travelled and experienced writer specialising in hospitality and aviation. His work has appeared in a variety of consumer and travel trade titles, and online newswires. Recent travels have taken him to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Seoul, Kazakhstan, United Kingdom and Bali, although he is just as happy walking with his dog on a local beach. If you've never heard of Yukigassen, you're almost certainly not alone. It's a seven-a-side snowball fight between grown-ups, but with international rules. And in Japan, where the game originated in an effort to energise snow-bound communities during the winter months when all the international tourists had gone home, there is a move to introduce the sport to the Winter Olympics. Yukigassen traces its roots to kids' snowball fights and some 30 years ago in Hokkaido, international rules and special equipment were developed, and the game began to sell itself as "humanity's oldest winter sport". Now, 150 teams descend on "ShowaShinzan", the pinnacle of Yukigassen competition to compete for the Yukigassen World Championship. I wouldn't have known all this unless I had attended the UNWTO International Conference on Tourism and Snow Culture in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, where several experts on winter tourism offered their wisdom on how Japan might revitalise its snow resorts. Yamagata was chosen for the event because it was one of the areas damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. Despite the damage, Yamagata Prefecture hotels and guesthouses donated a total of almost 119,000 guest nights to evacuees from the worst hit earthquake regions in Fukushima and Miyagi Prefectures. Japan has 279 snow resorts, ranking it second in the world behind the United States. It has more snow resorts than France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, while South Korea – host of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang - has only 16 snow resorts. Snowballs in Japan China, host of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, is ranked eighth in the world with 78 snow resorts. Yet despite Japan's abundance of snow resorts, the skiing/ snowboarding population has skidded from 18 million in 1998 to 5.8 million in 2016, a year when international ski visitors to Japan reached an all-time high of 2.4 million. It was this slump in domestic numbers that brought UNWTO to Yamagata where it was generally agreed that "less is more" and that closing older ski resorts and developing new snow resort activities, including traditional Japanese performing arts and hot springs, was the way forward for the resorts that remained. It was also pointed out that "snow country culture" could be further developed by drawing in local communities to be part of any diversification of products offered to international visitors. Globally, the attraction of snow resorts is waning. "Our current model (in international ski areas) is against change but we need change," said academic Tobias Luthe, a professor at Chur University in Switzerland. "Change is about adaption and innovation," he added. Which, surely, brings us back to Yukigassen, a game developed to promote activity in the snow, a kids' game that could one day find itself as an Olympic sport. And the chance of that happening? Hopefully more than that of a snowball in hell. Japan has 279 snow resorts, ranking it second in the world behind the United States.

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