Travel Pro Breaks Down the Truth About Cost of Skiing in Japan vs. the United States
If you're someone who goes skiing a lot, you know firsthand that it ain't exactly a cheap hobby. The cost of gear, travel, lift tickets, and other accoutrement price out a lot of people by nature, and if you're not way up in a high tax bracket, it can be a struggle to keep up with it all. The question is, could you be skiing cheaper somewhere else?
Japan is home to a lot of nice ski resorts, and these resorts have started to garner a fair bit of attention for being very affordable by US standards. But does this reputation hold up to scrutiny, or are you better off staying stateside if you want to save some dough? Raimee, an international travel expert, crunched those numbers on February 12 to bring us the answer:
In a world full of misinformation, I love seeing some cold, hard numbers. Raimee (@raimeetravel on TikTok) did her due diligence and plotted out the price of a (relatively) low-budget ski trip in both the US and Japan- and yes, she factored in flight costs from the US to Japan as well. So, what's her verdict?
Well, when it comes to the price of lift tickets alone, there's no competition: Japan wins by a long shot. In Japan, Raimee's lift tickets (which covered full access to ten different ski resorts for three days) cost around $150 in USD. By contrast, even taking some more affordable resorts into account, three-day lift tickets in the US cost hundreds of dollars more on average.
That extreme price difference carried over to hotel costs: a $200 per night average in Hakuba, Japan, vs a $700 per night average in Aspen, Colorado. Japan and the US were closer in terms of transport costs from major cities to resort towns (though the US was still pricier on average). Gear rental costs averaged $100 cheaper in Japan than the US, and while the gap wasn't as significant, Raimee noted that even the food in Japanese resort towns was cheaper on average. In short, Japan cleared the US on affordability.
But what about the flight costs? This was the deciding factor, because if the flight to Japan was too costly, it could totally negate all of the other savings. Comparing a number of major airports from the East to the West Coast, Raimee documented an average range of $650-1,200 for a round-trip flight, significantly more expensive than the average domestic flight to Denver or Aspen. However...
After tallying everything up, Raimee found that, even factoring in flight costs, you could save roughly $1,000 skiing in Japan instead of the US. Obviously, those exact numbers will vary based on where you're going, where you're flying from, etc., but yes: the rumors are true. If you're craving a great ski vacation, Japan's probably going to be the cheaper option!
More about the Hakuba Ski Area
Like the United States. Japan has a ton of ski areas, but since Raimee took a lot of her numbers from Hakuba Valley near Nagano, I thought I'd zero in on that one!
High in the Japanese Alps, Hakuba Valley has the prestige of being the place where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held. There are ten different ski resorts located in Hakuba, and as Raimee said, she got three-day full access to all of them for only $!50 USD. Hakuba is about 163 miles north of Tokyo, but according to the Hakuba Collection, you can get from Tokyo to Hakuba in about three hours if you take the shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagano and travel the rest of the way by bus.
Japan is a beautiful and rewarding country to visit, even if you're not a skier. Since skiing is so cheap there, though, why not give it a try if you're in the region?
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