Niseko Village Ski Resort — Attraction in Niseko

I have almost completed 4 months working here as a lifty. Amazing terrain, location and snow, but jeez do these people NOT know how to run a resort! Everything from the fake village, to the utterly stupid base area gondolas are just for show, and really serve no purpose and a huge waste of money. Which would have been far better suited upgrading their 50 year old gondolas and chairs instead of making sure hotel guests did't have to walk 10 minutes to their overpriced restaurants. No beginner area infrastructure either. YTL do not care whatsoever about the staff who run this resort day to day and are only focused on having the cheapest labour no matter how mentally taxing the work is on the staff. With no staff benefits or discounts for any of the surrounding area. If you plan to come here for a working holiday, DON'T. I promise you will have a far better experience working at literally any other resort in Japan or overseas. These people only care about being flashy and attracting the rich instagram holidayers and have no love for the snow industry. This place shouldn't exist. YTL if you see this, maybe you should take your management team for a tour of literally any other more modern resort and then you might understand how stupid of an operation this is, and maybe have a little compassion for those that...

Road trip to Niseko yesterday. Arrived at Hanazono at about 9am. A warm weather spell meant the snow was pretty wet and choppy. But the crowds!!! Too many people and not enough lifts! Looks like lifts have been decommissioned on Hirafu as well as a couple weren’t going and the pizza box to the top was out of action I suspect due to high winds. There is a new gondola and a super fancy hooded 6 seater at Hanazono though. But just too crowded to be enjoyable. I get that it’s Chinese New Year and this was probably the busiest time of year, but lift lines were just too long! First skied here in 2002 and had been back a couple of times since then but the secret is now definitely out. It is now getting too overdeveloped for the size of skiable area. Too many people and crowds waiting for lifts. I don’t think I’d need to ski at Niseko again unless there are new lifts put up...

(Visited as a ski resort in February) Awful lift service, completely unable to keep up with demand even in the off season and with several lifts closed for the entire duration of our 2 week visit. Queue for Niseko gondola from the Hilton was in excess of an hour, I shudder to think what it would be like to try and enjoy niseko while staying in village. Cannot comment on food or drink as I did not stay long enough in village to try them. The lifts themselves seemed ancient, I would judge the gondola design to originate from the 1970s and I only hope it holds up to modern...