A ‘snowy’ tourist destination has been slammed after trying to recreate the wintery weather – using cotton wool.

The Chengdu Snow Village in the Sichuan province of China was marketing itself as a winter wonderland, posting photos online of the area covered in snow to pull tourists in over the Lunar New Year.

But when visitors arrived, they were met with log cabins and railings covered in stapled-down sheets of white cotton and soapy bubbles in the brown grassy areas.

Tourists were left furious and disappointed with one social media user who went saying: “I feel cheated. I think my intelligence has been insulted!”

Another said: “A snow village without snow. In today’s age of well-developed internet, scenic spots must advertise truthfully and avoid deception or false advertising, otherwise they will only shoot themselves in the foot.”

The Snow Village issued an apology on social media, blaming unusually warm weather in the region for the fiasco.

“In order to create a ‘snowy’ atmosphere the tourist village purchased cotton for the snow…but it did not achieve the expected effect, leaving a very bad impression on tourists who came to visit,” it said in a statement.

Refunds would be provided to unsatisfied visitors, the post added.

“Following the precedents of previous years, we typically have snow in winter. So we set up this spot for a photoshoot in advance to wait for the snow to come,” a staff member told the state-run Global Times. “However, this year, the weather didn’t cooperate, and it didn’t snow.”

A worker at the atrraction’s management office admitted the fake snow made of cotton was cleaned up following public outrage.

“It snowed every winter in the past. So we upgraded this area to become a tour site and promoted it widely before its opening,” the unnamed worker told the Shanghai Morning Post. “We were waiting for the arrival of snow. Unfortunately, the weather did not side with us.”

The village has since closed down and authorities are investigating the tourist attraction for suspected false advertising, Chengdu’s Culture and Tourism Bureau said in a statement.

The country’s weather bureau has warned that climate change is causing hotter and longer heatwaves as well as more frequent and unpredictable heavy rain. China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

When Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics, climate variability and an extreme drought forced the games to be almost completely reliant on artificial snow.

This outrage comes after a video circulated on social media last year that showed a famous waterfall in a national park may have been artificially enhanced by a water pipe.

Park authorities later said the waterfall in north-central Henan province had undergone “a tiny improvement during the dry season” to cater for expectant tourists.