Dolomites Tourism Statistics: Three Provinces, No Dolomites Total

The best number: South Tyrol's 38.2 million nights

ASTAT's annual release, "Entwicklung im Tourismus 2025" (astat info 25/2026), is the most complete official tourism count anywhere in the Dolomites. It records 38,241,898 nights and 9,072,335 arrivals. The average stay was 4.2 days, unchanged on 2024. The province had 12,187 establishments with 262,868 beds, up 2.3%, and bed occupancy across the year was 39.9%. The release text gives 262,870 beds, two more than its own tables; we use the table figure.

The count includes accommodation that many national statistics leave out. Commercial establishments, mainly hotels, took 27,586,495 nights, 72.1% of the total, up 2.0%. Non-commercial accommodation took the other 10,655,403 nights, 27.9%, up 6.2%. ASTAT's non-commercial category covers private rooms let by people with up to eight rooms or five apartments, farm stays, mountain huts, campsites and youth hostels. Non-commercial accommodation grew three times as fast as commercial establishments in 2025.

The data are provisional. ASTAT revises its figures, and an earlier provisional reading, published with the December 2025 monthly release on 20 January 2026, gave nights up 2.9% and 9.0 million arrivals, up 3.6%. The annual release of 15 May superseded it. Anyone citing the 3.1% should cite the May release.

One caution applies to any long comparison. Since 1 November 2023, South Tyrol's accommodation providers have reported guests daily through a new system, rather than monthly, according to an ASTAT circular of 16 January 2025. We found no ASTAT statement that the change breaks the series, but none that it does not, either.

With that caveat, the 2019 comparison can be made. ASTAT's Statistical Yearbook 2024 gives 33,684,578 nights and 7,704,318 arrivals for 2019. Set against the provisional 2025 figures, that is a rise of 13.5% in nights and 17.8% in arrivals (DERIVED: our arithmetic, mixing a final 2019 figure with a provisional 2025 one across a change in reporting). ASTAT's own release compares 2025 with 2016 and 2021, not with 2019.

For scale only, South Tyrol's 38.2 million nights are about 7.1% of the 535.5 million nights Eurostat records for all of Italy in 2025 (DERIVED, our arithmetic). The national figure now counts non-business private rentals in full, and ISTAT gives 481 million without them, so the share mixes bases. How that change reshapes Italy's totals is covered in our Italy tourism record watch.

Who comes: Germany first, Italy second, the United States far behind

Germans spent 17,178,534 nights in South Tyrol in 2025, 44.9% of the total, according to ASTAT. That share was 47.3% in 2024, so Germany's weight fell even as total nights rose. German guests made 3,564,001 arrivals, 39.3% of the total, which means they stayed longer than average.

Italian guests, a category that includes South Tyrol's own residents, spent 10,671,351 nights, 27.9%, and made 2,728,370 arrivals, 30.1%. Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy together took 80.8% of nights. Separate shares for Austria and Switzerland were not captured in our reading of the release.

Guests from the United States spent 592,690 nights, 1.5% of the total. That is small next to Germany. The national picture for American visitors is set out in our report on American tourists in Italy. We did not find a UK figure for any Dolomites province; national figures for British visitors are in our report on British tourists in Italy.

The market mix shifts with the season. In August 2026, on ASTAT's preliminary monthly release, Italians took 47.9% of nights and Germans 33.8%. Across the whole of 2025, the order was the other way round. In August 2026, South Tyrol's preliminary count had Italian guests, including residents of the province, ahead of Germans.

August, and 70 nights per resident

August is the peak. South Tyrol recorded 6,170,785 nights in August 2025, up 2.3%, which ASTAT called a new August record. That one month held 16.1% of the year's nights. Arrivals were 1,298,746 and bed occupancy reached 75.6%, against 39.9% for the year as a whole.

Measured against the population, the load is heavy. South Tyrol had 542,134 residents on 31 December 2025, on ASTAT's provisional population release of 9 June 2026. That gives 70.5 tourist nights and 16.7 arrivals per resident in 2025 (DERIVED: our arithmetic, provisional nights over provisional population). ASTAT publishes its own intensity measure, 19.4 tourists per 100 residents in 2025, up from 18.8 in 2024. That counts tourists present on an average day, a different calculation from ours, and the two should not be confused.

Neither figure says anything about a particular valley. ASTAT divides the province into eight districts, and a factsheet by WIFO, the research institute of the Bolzano Chamber of Commerce, gives 2025 nights by district citing ASTAT. Pustertal had 11.77 million, 31% of the total, Burggrafenamt 7.83 million, Salten-Schlern 7.01 million and Eisacktal 3.82 million. About 11.5 million nights, 30%, were in the three districts centred on places outside the Dolomites: Burggrafenamt around Merano, Vinschgau with 2.61 million and Bozen city with 1.04 million (DERIVED: our sum of secondary figures).

Districts are administrative units, not the tourism areas that visitors know. Nothing we opened splits the nights for Val Gardena, Alta Badia, Kronplatz or the Seiser Alm. The closest signal is municipal: Selva, Wolkenstein in German, was ASTAT's top municipality by nights in December 2025, with 172,084, and again in March 2026, with 166,322.

Winter 2025/26 and the first nine months of 2026

South Tyrol's winter half-year, November 2025 to April 2026, brought 14,780,459 nights, up 3.3%, and 3,515,043 arrivals, up 3.6%, according to ASTAT's release of 5 June 2026. Germans took 40.1% of winter nights, Italians 27.7% and guests from the Benelux countries 4.7%. March nights fell 4.1% on the winter release, which ASTAT attributes partly to the timing of Easter.

ASTAT also publishes preliminary monthly figures, which it treats as final six months later. On those releases, 2026 has been uneven. January nights rose 1.6% and February 5.1%. March fell 4.8% (the earlier monthly release; the winter release gives −4.1%) and April rose 0.3%. May jumped 22.4%, which ASTAT links to Pentecost falling in the second half of the month. June slipped 0.6%. July rose 2.2%, August 1.0% to 6,235,012 nights and September 8.4%.

Added together, the nine monthly releases give 32,726,158 nights for January to September 2026 (DERIVED: our sum of provisional releases). We give no growth rate for it. The monthly releases compare each month with a provisional base, and the January 2025 base used in the January 2026 release differs from the annual table's January 2025 figure of 3,346,743, so the nine-month 2025 total cannot be rebuilt on a comparable basis.

Trentino: over 20 million, from a newspaper

Trentino's figures are the weak link. ISPAT's own tables could not be accessed for this article, so everything below comes from press reports or from the province's own press office, not from an ISPAT table.

L'Adige reported on 13 May 2026, citing ISPAT data, that Trentino passed 20 million presences in 2025. It gave hotel presences of over 14 million, extra-hotel presences of over 6.2 million and foreign presences of over 9 million. August passed 3.7 million, and January and February each passed 2 million. The article gave no exact total, no arrivals and no 2024 figure. The floors cannot be added into an exact number.

Like South Tyrol's, the Trentino figure covers the whole province. That includes Trento city, the Trentino shore of Lake Garda and valleys outside the Dolomites. Trento city alone recorded 1,402,520 presences in 2025, 61.8% Italian, according to press reports of ISPAT data. The article gave the rise as 8.5% on about 1,304,000. Those two numbers give a rise of 7.6% (DERIVED: our arithmetic), so the 8.5% does not match the article's own rounded base. The Garda side of the province is covered in a separate report of ours on Lake Como and Lake Garda visitor statistics.

The winter figures are more precise. L'Adige reported on 30 July 2026 that Trentino's winter season, December 2025 to April 2026, brought 8,017,671 nights, up 3.4%, and 1,947,945 arrivals, up 3.3%. Italians took 52.7% of presences. Poland contributed nearly 1 million, down 3.1%, and Germany rose 14.5% to over 500,000. San Martino di Castrozza, Primiero and Vanoi grew 6.3%, while Val di Fassa fell 1.2% and Val di Fiemme with Val di Cembra fell 2.9%. February fell 2.2%.

The previous winter, 2024/25, is documented by the province itself. A release from the provincial press office of 3 July 2025, citing ISPAT, which we opened, gives 7,753,642 nights, up 0.9%, with arrivals down 1.6% and an average stay of 4.1 nights. Hotels took 80.5% of nights, with 88,323 beds and net occupancy of 65.2%. The two winters are consistent: 8,017,671 against 7,753,642 is a rise of 3.4% (DERIVED). We did not obtain Trentino's resident population for 2026, so we give no nights per resident.

Belluno and Cortina: arrivals only

The Veneto Dolomites publish the least. The regional statistics office's "Statistiche Flash" bulletin of May 2026, using provisional ISTAT data, gives 2025 arrivals for the province of Belluno by tourism area, in thousands, with average stays. We read it in a summarised copy of the PDF.

Cortina recorded 339,000 arrivals with an average stay of 3.2 nights. Marmolada-Civetta had 324,000 at 3.8 nights, Cadore 189,000 at 2.7, Valbelluna 187,000 at 2.7, Val Boite 111,000 at 3.7, Val Biois-Agordino 104,000 at 3.9 and Comelico 51,000 at 3.7. The seven areas sum to about 1.3 million arrivals (DERIVED: our sum of rounded figures).

The bulletin gives no absolute nights for Belluno, and we found no 2024 or 2019 series to compare against. Multiplying Cortina's rounded arrivals by its average stay would give an estimate, not a published count. The Veneto as a whole recorded over 22 million arrivals and over 74 million presences in 2025, on preliminary figures for the whole region reported by the agency 9Colonne. Our Veneto Dolomites destination page covers the area itself.

Why the three sources cannot be added

Set side by side, the three provincial sources differ on almost every dimension that matters. They come from different bodies, count different units over different periods, include different accommodation, and two of the three could not be opened at the source.

South Tyrol counts all accommodation, including private rooms and farm stays, for the calendar year, and publishes it. Trentino's annual figure counts hotel and extra-hotel accommodation, reaches us only through a newspaper, and comes as floors. Belluno gives arrivals by area, not nights. Even the winter figures do not line up: ASTAT's winter runs from November to April, ISPAT's from December to April. A reader who adds 38.2 million and 20 million and calls the result "58 million Dolomites nights" has added two provinces, not a mountain range, and has included Merano's spa hotels and the Trentino shore of Lake Garda along the way.

The accommodation difference is large. South Tyrol's non-commercial accommodation alone took 10,655,403 nights in 2025, more than half of Trentino's entire press-reported floor of 20 million (DERIVED: our comparison). Whether ISPAT's extra-hotel category includes private rooms of the kind ASTAT counts is not stated in the reports we read, so the size of the gap between the two definitions cannot be measured.

The markets differ too. In South Tyrol's winter 2025/26, Germans took 40.1% of nights and Italians 27.7%. In Trentino's, Italians took 52.7% of presences and Polish guests nearly 1 million. The two winters cover different months, November to April and December to April, and ASTAT's Italian share includes South Tyrol residents. Two neighbouring provinces that share the same mountains draw visibly different guests, so a single "Dolomites visitor profile" built from either would mislead.

The same problem appears at national level, where Italy's 2025 count now includes non-business private rentals in full. Our analysis of Italy and Spain's tourism nights shows how a change of basis can move a country's ranking. Within the Dolomites the problem is sharper, because the provinces do not share a basis even in the same year.

Did the UNESCO listing raise tourism?

The claim that tourism grew after the 2009 inscription circulates widely. The most cited version is a quote from Marcella Morandini of the Fondazione Dolomiti UNESCO, reported by L'Adige and ANSA on 18 June 2019, that visitors rose by "at least 10%" and in some places "up to 90%". The figures came from operators' reports, not from a dataset. It is an anecdote, not a statistic.

The first statistical test we found is more recent and more cautious. A Bank of Italy occasional paper, number 1027, by Cascarano, Fezzi and Rodriguez, published on 17 June 2026, uses municipal data for the provinces of Trento, Bolzano and Belluno. According to its abstract, presences rose after the UNESCO inscription, more in Trentino and more among Italian visitors, while beds fell and the number of facilities did not grow. We read only the abstract. The paper's estimates, magnitudes and methods were not opened for this article, so we give no number from it.

On the evidence opened, then, the one statistical study we found reports a rise in presences after the inscription; whether the listing caused it, and by how much, cannot be judged from the abstract. The "10%" should not be repeated as a measured effect.

Milano Cortina belongs in a separate column

The Milano Cortina Winter Games ran from 6 to 22 February 2026, with the biathlon held at Anterselva in South Tyrol. None of the provincial series attributes a change in February to them.

ASTAT's February 2026 release notes only that the Olympic biathlon took place at Antholz, Anterselva in Italian. Nights in South Tyrol rose 5.1% that month. Arrivals from Norway rose 142.5% to 3,264 and from France 78.8% to 9,708, small numbers in a province with millions of monthly nights, and ASTAT draws no causal link. In Trentino, February presences fell 2.2%; L'Adige mentioned the Games as context, and the connection is the newspaper's reading. The Bank of Italy's Olympic note has a row labelled "Trentino", which the note says covers Trentino-Alto Adige, and counts foreign overnight travellers, a different unit from either province's nights.

Our report on Milano Cortina 2026 visitors sets out what was and was not counted during the Games. Here they are kept apart: no figure in this article is presented as an Olympic effect.

Claims that do not hold

Several figures about the Dolomites fail on inspection, or hold only with a qualification.

The most common error is the one this article opened with: a Dolomites total. We found no source for any "X million nights in the Dolomites" figure. The second is treating South Tyrol's number as the Dolomites' number. It includes Bolzano city's 1.04 million nights and the Vinschgau's 2.61 million, on WIFO's district figures, and excludes Trentino, Belluno and the Friuli provinces entirely.

Two period mismatches look like conflicts and are not. WIFO's factsheet gives 37.9 million nights for South Tyrol's tourism year from 1 November 2024 to 31 October 2025, with summer at 62.3% and winter at 37.7%, citing ASTAT. ASTAT's 38.2 million is for the calendar year. And ASTAT's winter figure of 14.78 million, November to April, is not Trentino's 8.02 million with a month missing: the two provinces count different months under different definitions.

Planning Dolomites holidays with these numbers

Travellers, including British readers planning Dolomites holidays, can draw three practical points from the official data. August is the busiest month by a wide margin, with three-quarters of South Tyrol's beds occupied in August 2025, and in August 2026 Italian guests took more of South Tyrol's nights than Germans. Shoulder months are quieter, though September 2026 nights rose 8.4% on South Tyrol's preliminary count. And the busiest place is not a province but a handful of sites, whose access rules and booking systems are covered in a separate report of ours on Dolomites overtourism, turnstiles and tolls. Bases, transport and seasons are in our Dolomites travel guide, and our list of things to do in the Dolomites covers quieter alternatives.

Tourism businesses and investors should benchmark against the province they operate in and the right accommodation type. In South Tyrol, non-commercial accommodation grew 6.2% in 2025 against 2.0% for commercial establishments. Trentino's winter hotel occupancy of 65.2% in 2024/25 is a net hotel measure, while South Tyrol's 39.9% is an annual bed occupancy across all accommodation; the two are not comparable. A business that uses 58 million as "Dolomites demand" is working from a number nobody publishes.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures with their status: 38,241,898 nights and 9,072,335 arrivals in South Tyrol in 2025 (ASTAT, provisional, whole province, opened at the source); over 20 million presences in Trentino (ISPAT via L'Adige, press-only, a floor); 8,017,671 nights in Trentino's winter 2025/26 (ISPAT via L'Adige, press-only); Cortina's 339,000 arrivals in 2025 (Regione Veneto, provisional, arrivals only). They should not cite a combined Dolomites total, Morandini's 10% as a measured UNESCO effect, the superseded 2.9%, or Trento's 8.5%.

What to watch next

Three releases would close part of the gap, with one reading still to do. ASTAT's monthly releases will complete 2026, and its annual release for 2026 is due in spring 2027 if this year's pattern holds. An ISPAT table for 2025 would turn Trentino's floors into a number. A Veneto nights figure for the Belluno tourism areas would give Cortina a comparable count. And reading the full Bank of Italy paper, already published, would show what size of UNESCO effect it estimates.

Even then, no body would be counting the Dolomites. The pattern matches the rest of this series, from the Venice access fee results onwards: Italian authorities publish rules, totals and forecasts for the territories they administer, and the places visitors travel to often fall between them. For the Dolomites, the official record is three provincial counts built on three different terms, two of which we could not open at the source.