*   With current focus on winter sports searches for "Bobsledding" and "Curling Lessons" increase by 3233%
  *   Interest in winter sports like skiing and snowboarding search terms show a massive spike around 11th February 2018 in huge excess of 2017
  *   Even obscure winter activities like skijoring, shovel racing and ice driving see a boost

Alpine experts at Crystal Ski Holidays have unveiled their latest research, revealing a huge uptake in searches for snow-based activities. As the world's attention turns to winter pursuits, 'would be snow seekers' are on the hunt for everything from skiing and snowboarding to curling and the North Pole marathon.

The results show the spike is beyond the natural interest in snow-based sports during the colder winter months.

There's No Growth like Snow Growth
While throughout the year there's been a steady increase in more unusual activities such as snow kayaking and snow kiting (similar to water-based kiteboarding), there was a clear and sudden spike in search activity just after Christmas or more prominently, in the week starting 11th February, when the world's attention turned to snow sports. Compared with the same time last year:


*         "Snowboarding" saw a growth in search of 733%, with the majority of searches coming from Canada. But it's not just this cold northern country that wanted to hit the slopes: New Zealand saw a 95% increase in 'snowboarding' searches, while Australia had 91% more 'snowboarding' searches than in February 2017.

*          "Curling Near Me" grew by 2400% and "Curling Lessons" by 3233% - with "Bobsledding" also seeing 3233% growth.

*         "Shovel racing" saw a growth of 553%, and a massive spike of interest at the start of the Winter Olympics, a short term growth of 614%.

*         Skijoring (ski driving where the skier is being pulled either by a horse, a dog (or dogs) or a motor vehicle) interest grew by 117% - there was a slow growth of interest from October 2017, but a sudden significant spike early February.

There's a range of other less-known winter sports you can try if these don't tickle your fancy - from Japanese snowball capture-the-flag to the high intensity "ice cross", all of which are searched for more and more. You can see the rest of the story on these unusual cold-weather adventures here