Niseko embraces Chinese New Year visitors

NISEKO is bulging at the seams with visitors and snow as the international Chinese community and others fill town for the Chinese New Year.

This Hokkaido village is now firmly on the radar of Chinese travellers looking to travel while celebrating the Lunar New Year, and they haven’t been let down by the snow or weather this year.

While there’s been extremely consistent snowfall all season, visitors were treated to a rare perfect blue sky February day in between dumps of powder this week.

According to recordings taken by local blog 360niseko there has been almost 12m of snowfall at village level.

Until now there have only been a few bluebird days with only a handful not recording any new snow since the resort opened in late November.

There appears to be very little if any accommodation available in the village, with Niseko Management Service (NMS) reporting they are at capacity.

“Our accommodation is completely full for this week and I expect that would be the case for most properties in Niseko,” said NMS’s Jeff Rosenberger.

“The atmosphere in Niseko during CNY is exciting - the village is at capacity and it is great to see all the visitors enjoying the on and off mountain activities.

“Visitors from Hong Kong are the majority but there is still plenty of visitors from Australia and other Asian countries.”

Hokkaido Tracks Holidays guest services manager Ben Metcalf said there was an international mix of tourists in HT accommodation for the week.

“The village has a great vibe at the moment – the extra people in town make for a really lively atmosphere,” Ben said.

“At the moment the majority of our visitors are from Australia and Hong Kong, but we do have guests from a wide variety of locations – Singapore, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the USA and of course Japan.

“We're about as close to full as we can get, with lots of guests coming and going everyday.

“Everybody seems to be arriving early and departing late this year - we have empty ski bags everywhere here, storing them for guests trying to squeeze in an extra half day of skiing!”

For anyone reading this who wished they had come to Niseko this year, Ben said it’s definitely not too late with March being one of the best times of the year.

“People are starting to realise the benefits of coming in March - the snow is still good and we often have powder days,” he said.

“The weather is warmer and the mountain is quieter. We do still have some room in March for anyone who is interested.”

NMS says even the Easter holiday period at the end of March has had good bookings this year.