The Dolomites and Digital Innovation, Two Years After What has changed in the web presence of the mountain huts along the Alta Via 1 Dolomiti during the Covid-19 pandemic

Reasons to research on digital innovation in an apparently timeless environment like the Dolomites, a mountain range in the northern Italian Alps included in the UNESCO Heritage List since 2009, do abound. Mountain tourism in the Alps has dramatically increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, attracting visitors from locked-down cities, and placing overtourism risks here and there. The question has risen whether digital innovation, which helps providing overtourism management through communication, recommendation, and reservation systems, are implemented enough in the area. The research this paper reports about was focused on the very representative cluster of the mountain huts along the Alta Via 1 Dolomiti, somehow the top of the heap. A previous analysis of the web presence of those huts – some more than thirty of them, according to literature – was conducted as early as in 2019, duly reported during the Sistur meeting that year, and consequently published in a leading academic magazine. The same methodology was extensively applied during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 courses in Tourism Information Systems at the University of Trento – at the Department of Economics Management as well as at the Department of Humanities – and again by the authors in the summer of 2021. The paper reports detailed results, proving that the innovation was significant though insufficient.