“…Sigh. The National Ski Area Association (U.S.) says that 481 ski areas operated last year, trending downward. Snow Japan lists over 500 THIS season and admits their list is NOT complete.”

Just because the States has a significant land mass does NOT mean that they have the largest number of ski hills. Japan’s resorts may be smaller in terms of acreage, but as far as the numbers go, they hit a peak of *over 600 operating resorts* a couple of years ago. “Heads and shoulders above everyone else in terms of numbers.”

(Edit)

Then where, exactly, would you like to draw the line? Number of lifts? Only those areas w/something besides a surface lift? Acreage? Lodge square footage? A lot of people who ski on smaller hills would be offended by the news that they’ve never been skiing! I’d say that the only way this question can be answered is by the number of different tickets it is possible to buy.

P.S. The Ski Dubai people are going to be CHOKED that b/c they only have +/-200′ vert. & they’re indoors, they spent $275 million on a non-ski resort! Would you like to break the news, or shall I?

P.P.S. By that kind of arbitrary logic, I’d say a ski hill is only to be counted if it has more than 3850′ of lift serviced vertical. Oh look! Now in North America, the only places to ski are in Canada, eh?

As for the rest of your question, I’m sorry but I don’t have the time to do the research or writing to answer that portion. You’ll have to google it on your own.

AcM, I see where you’re coming from and have to disagree. Have you ever been to Japan? Most of those “resorts” you’re talking about are literally a one lift, 200 vertical foot-drop kind of operation. I stand by what I said, I think the only way to define a “resort” is to use the traditional mountain based ski resort as a model. An indoor skiing operation or one-slope rope tow shouldn’t count. In which case, Japan doesn’t have that many resorts at all. So maybe the paramaters of this question could be refined?