Yubari Resort Mount Racey
The ski resort of Japan's first bankrupt city, bought by Yubari for 2.6 billion yen and sold fifteen years later for a tenth of that; it closed in 2020 under Hong Kong ownership and came back a season later.
- Region
- Hokkaido
- Country
- Japan
- Status
- reopened
- Year closed
- 2020
- Reason for closure
- A chain of financial failures. Yubari City, which had bought the resort for 2.6 billion yen in 2002, sold it in 2017 for 240 million yen to the Chinese group Yuan Da; it was resold in 2019 to the Hong Kong company Great Trend, which closed it in 2020 amid the pandemic collapse in tourism. Great Trend then set up Yubari Resort Operation and reopened the area for the 2021-22 season.
History
Mount Racey stands above Yubari in central Hokkaido, an hour from New Chitose Airport, and its story is inseparable from the town's. Yubari was a coal city that lost its mines and then its people, and in 2007 it became the first municipality in Japan ever to declare bankruptcy. It had bought the Mount Racey ski resort in 2002 for 2.6 billion yen as part of an attempt to convert itself into a tourist town; in 2017, under financial administration, it sold the resort for 240 million yen, roughly a tenth of what it paid. The Chinese group Yuan Da held it briefly, sold it on in 2019 to the Hong Kong company Great Trend, and in 2020 Great Trend closed it as pandemic tourism collapsed. Great Trend then formed Yubari Resort Operation and brought the area back for the 2021-22 season, and it has run since. It is included here as one of the clearest cases of a ski resort used as a municipal rescue strategy and failing at it - the same pattern as Kami-Sunagawa-dake and Chisenupuri elsewhere in this dataset, but with the town's collapse and the resort's changes of hand documented in unusual detail. The resort's opening year and a full lift inventory are not established in accessible sources.
Sources and further reading
More in Japan
Location
43.0466, 141.9796