Austria's premier winter sports destinations are enhancing ties with Chinese ski resorts, with hundreds of Austrian instructors traveling to China to exchange expertise and tap into the country's rapidly expanding ski market.

Gerhard Sint, the head of ski instructors in the Salzburg Region, has made it an annual tradition to send dozens of instructors to China, where they introduce students to the time-honored Austrian way of skiing.

"Our trainers, they fly over and they stay about two months in China. This cooperation is getting more and more intensive because more and more ski resorts are developed in China," said Sint.

Despite Austria's historical status as a skiing paradise, the country has witnessed a notable decrease in the number of local skiers over the past decades, due to both rising lift prices and temperatures.

Consequently, Ski Amade, the largest ski lift operator in Austria, is turning its attention towards China's rapidly growing winter sports sector for valuable insights and knowledge exchange.

In the past five years, the number of skiers and snowboarders in China has almost tripled - helped by the construction of massive ski domes in many Chinese cities.

Christoph Eisinger, who runs the continent's second largest ski area near Salzburg, said that's something Europe could adopt.

"This easy access to skiing - this is what we can learn in Austria from Chinese ski resorts. Ski domes definitely would help a lot to actually keep this lifestyle also in the big agglomerations of Europe alive," said Eisinger, managing director, Ski Amade.

Meanwhile, China's typically relatively small-scaled resorts could learn from the Alpine trend to interlink multiple ski areas, creating much larger ski destinations.

"To ride on all of our slopes you need three or four days," said Andreas Kocher, ski lift attendant.

And after the slope, it's time for apres-ski. Eisinger has predicted this festive Alpine lifestyle will soon make its way to China.

"I think also Chinese ski resorts could actually adopt this concept. It keeps skiers in the sport for decades," said Eisinger.

Another measure to keep people in the sport is the exchange of expertise. Eisinger started cooperating with Thaiwoo Ski Resort in Chongli District of Zhangjiakou City in north China's Hebei Province seven years ago and is hoping to continue this fruitful cooperation in the future.