Too Many Visitors: Overtourism in the Dolomites

Between selfies on the peaks and residents fleeing their homes, the Belluno Dolomites are searching for a balance that mass tourism threatens to shatter for good.

When the UNESCO Committee recognised the Dolomites as a World Heritage Site in 2009, no one could have imagined that this certificate of exceptional value might one day become a double-edged sword. Today, sixteen years on, the numbers tell a more complex story: a landscape of extraordinary beauty struggling to bear the weight of its own success.

A World Heritage Site Becoming a Burden

The Tre Cime di Lavaredo, Lake Braies, the Passo Giau: places that until a few decades ago were the domain of experienced mountaineers and seasoned mountain lovers, are now literally stormed by tourists who are often ill-prepared, drawn in by social media images that make these peaks look irresistible — and effortless. The Demoskopika Institute, in its 2025 report on the Overall Tourist Overcrowding Index (ICST), places South Tyrol — and with it the entire Dolomite arc — among Italy’s most pressured tourist areas, alongside Rimini and Venice.

Yet the phenomenon in the Dolomites has specific characteristics that make it particularly insidious. It is not simply a matter of crowding: it is the temporal and spatial concentration of visitor flows that causes the damage. Thousands of visitors converge on the same iconic spots, at the same time of day, all chasing the same photograph. The result is a degraded experience for the tourist and an unsustainable burden on fragile mountain ecosystems.

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When tourists outnumber residents, the mountain stops being a living place and becomes an open-air film set.

— Demoskopika Institute, Tourist Overcrowding Index 2025

The Impact on the Belluno Area

The case of Auronzo di Cadore is telling. The municipal register has dropped below three thousand residents for the first time — more than double that figure in the post-war years — while every summer the village hosts up to twenty-five thousand tourist presences across hotels and private homes. This demographic imbalance is not an isolated case: it repeats itself across almost every municipality in the province of Belluno that gravitates around the main Dolomite attractions.

The “Dolomites brand”, enormously powerful even abroad, has driven rental prices upward across an ever-wider radius. Short-term rental platforms have cannibalised the residential housing market: for property owners, renting to tourists by the week is far more lucrative than renting to local workers by the year. The paradox is that even those running tourist facilities struggle to find staff willing to relocate, because there is simply no affordable housing to be found. Visitors willing to book accommodation up to 50–60 kilometres from the mountains purely for the brand’s appeal are leaving seasonal workers without anywhere to live.

Safety and Fragile Ecosystems

Overtourism in the Dolomites also brings a serious safety problem. Between June and July 2025, Italy’s National Alpine Rescue Corps recorded a 20% increase in call-outs compared to previous years, with 83 deaths and 5 missing persons. The recurring cause: unprepared tourists venturing onto challenging trails in pursuit of the photograph they saw on Instagram, with neither the technical training nor the proper equipment.

The environmental damage is equally severe. Growing vehicle traffic in the valley floors and on mountain roads generates air and noise pollution that disturbs wildlife. Trails, never designed to handle tens of thousands of footfalls per season, are succumbing to erosion. The high-altitude vegetation, already fragile in harsh climate conditions, is trampled underfoot by those who leave the marked paths for a perfect shot.

The Responses: Traffic Limits, Access Caps and New Markets

Institutional responses are multiplying, though still fragmented. Limited Traffic Zones (ZTL) are already in place in sensitive areas such as Lake Braies. At the Tre Cime, a cap on daily visitor numbers — modelled on Venice’s approach — has been under discussion for years. Veneto Region president Luca Zaia has proposed an app to manage access, and entry tickets for the most visited areas have also been mooted.

The Province of Belluno’s response focuses on de-seasonalisation: spreading visitor flows across the whole year rather than compressing them into the summer and winter peaks. The Dolomiti Bellunesi DMO Foundation is moving in the same direction, opening new markets — from China to the United States — to attract visitors during the low season. In 2025 alone, between June and September, around 4,000 Chinese visitor nights are estimated, an unprecedented figure made possible in part by the new direct Shanghai–Venice flight.

Key measures already in place or under discussion:

• →Seasonal Limited Traffic Zones on the main access roads to Dolomite lakes and mountain passes
• →Capped daily access to the most sensitive areas with mandatory online booking
• →Investment in local public transport to reduce private vehicle pressure
• →GAL grants for the renovation of buildings to provide affordable housing for seasonal workers
• →Multilingual education campaigns promoting responsible behaviour in the mountains
• →Promotion of alternative itineraries away from the most congested hot spots

What Kind of Tourism Do the Belluno Dolomites Want?

The central question remains open: is it possible to combine economically viable tourism with the preservation of a territory that holds the world’s highest certification of uniqueness? The answer can be neither a blanket ban on access nor resignation to gradual degradation. It demands an integrated vision that places at its centre not the number of visitors, but the quality of the experience and the long-term sustainability for those who live in the Dolomites all year round.

The Belluno Dolomites, historically less “developed” in tourism terms than the South Tyrolean and Trentino resorts, still have the opportunity to choose a different model: slow, conscious, territory-wide tourism. The challenge is not to waste this window of opportunity — learning from the mistakes of areas already paying the price of overtourism, on their own skin and on their own stone.

Sources: Demoskopika Institute – Overall Tourist Overcrowding Index 2025; Linkiesta.it; IrpiMedia; Il Dolomiti; National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps; Dolomiti Bellunesi DMO Foundation; Veneto Region; Province of Belluno; GAL Alto Bellunese. Data updated to summer 2025.

Cover photo: Matthew Gave — Pexels