7 Dolomites Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Trip

The Dolomites region of northern Italy is one of the most stunning places we’ve visited! So many places look like they’re straight out of a fairytale plus you have the benefit of solid infrastructure and warm Italian hospitality. We loved it so much that we look forward to returning in a few years – which isn’t something we often do.

But if you aren’t prepared, there are some very real pitfalls that can derail your epic Dolomites vacation. They range from big-picture planning items to more mundane details, but they’re all important to keep in mind.

Before you plan your trip, read over these Dolomites travel tips so you can learn from my mistakes and have the vacation of a lifetime. If you’re thinking about bringing the family, don’t miss my guide to visiting the Dolomites with kids too!

1. Underestimating the size of the region

The Dolomites, part of the Italian Alps, take up more land area than some US states and are full of steep, curving mountain passes that need to be taken slowly. Driving from one side to the other could take 2-3 hours each way, and some drives can stretch much longer as you try to avoid cyclists or get stuck in construction areas.

What does that mean for you? You’ll want to be strategic about where you stay.

I’ll admit that in the overwhelm of planning the rest of our recent Italy itinerary, I picked an awesome hotel in the Val Gardena area and figured we’d use that as a base for exploring the entire region. I was half right…

There are so many awesome experiences and hikes in the Dolomites, but they aren’t all in the same area. In the end – literally sitting in the lounge on my way to Rome – I decided to split our time and spend two nights in Val Gardena and the other two nights of our Dolomites stay on the east side closer to Cortina d’Ampezzo.

I’m so glad I made the shift! We saved ourselves a lot of unnecessary back and forth and we were able to arrive at popular trails earlier than if we had tried to drive all the way from Val Gardena.

2. Not booking hotels in advance

Going back to #1, I thought I had booked our hotel far in advance. In fact, I booked it in January for a July trip! But making a change just one week ahead proved a lot more complicated than I expected for a few reasons. Thankfully I had booked a changeable/cancellable rate at our hotel in Val Gardena so trimming a few days off of that reservation was no problem – be sure to keep that flexibility for yourself!

First, especially in the summer the Dolomites are a popular destination (particularly for Europeans). The good hotels get snapped up quickly, so booking ahead gives you the best choices for high-quality accommodations in the exact location where you want to be. Drives almost all take longer than the map shows (more on that later) so you’ll want to choose based on the hikes you want to do in addition to the usual considerations.

Second, family rooms can be in short supply. Obviously this won’t apply to everyone, but we travel as a family of four. A smaller hotel might have two or four rooms that can fit us and a dozen that can’t. Since one of my kids still prefers to be in the same room, suite or apartment as us there were some hotels we had to rule out because two rooms would have been required.

Third, plenty of smaller accommodations in the Dolomites don’t appear on major booking platforms at all. You’ll find these traditional hotels by clicking around on Google maps, and many of them have excellent reviews. But the only way to book is either via an expensive international phone call (with the potential for a language barrier) or using their web form/email address. I reached out to a few of those hotels and it was really tough – I needed to get something locked in, but had to wait for them to check their messages and then reply to me. In some cases that took more than a full business day. If you’re booking months in advance, waiting a day or two on your ideal hotel is no big deal because there are still plenty of backup options available.

3. Thinking that the driving is easy

I can’t thank my husband enough for driving us all over the world, but particularly in places like the Dolomites. We’ve never seen so many steep hairpin turns and switchbacks anywhere else. Add in cyclists who seem to think it’s all fun (but who I’m convinced have no regard for their own safety), only occasional mirrors to see around bends, uphill tour buses coming at you and then a major pre-Olympics construction back up for good measure…

To say that my anxiety is through the roof is an understatement. Italy has decriminalized certain things that can lessen anxiety in responsible adults and at times I really wish I had some with me. If you’re someone who is prone to car sickness, be sure to avoid looking at screens and bring your medicine or patch of choice because this is serious business.

The worst drive by far was crossing between the west and east sides of the Dolomites, which we thankfully did just once. We’re talking about 1000 meter climbs followed by 1000 meter descents several times over and always with tons of curves.

It’s all doable if you don’t mind crazy driving, so I’m not here to stop you or discourage you. But if this type of driving (whether you’re in the passenger seat or not) sounds like a nightmare then I suggest choosing one side of the Dolomites or the other for a given trip. You’ll still have tons of places to explore and can visit the other side next time. That will allow you to avoid most of the really difficult driving – some trails like Tre Cime still require crazy drives.

And that’s what we’ll do next time. We will probably return to Val Gardena within the next few years, and we’ll fly into Milan (MXP) if we’re coming directly from the US or Bolzano (BZO) if we’re elsewhere in Europe. You can even take the train from Rome to Bolzano and then pick up a car to do the last (not very harrowing) leg of the drive. The towns north of Cortina d’Ampezzo on the east side of the Dolomites are easy to access from Venice either by car or bus.

If you decide that you’re ok with driving, be sure to reserve your rental car in advance for the busy summer season and read up on Italy rental car tips.

4. Waiting until the last minute to choose (certain) hikes

Just like so many amazing National Parks in the United States, word has gotten out in the last few years about just how special the Dolomites are! In response to the pressures of over-tourism, several of the most popular locations have instituted advance ticketing systems.

Tickets aren’t cheap (40 EUR as of our visit in 2025) and they’re pretty inflexible once you book, so it’s a good idea to have a game plan about a week in advance. When I went online to book a few passes four days in advance, many time slots were already sold out and I had to rearrange plans. It all worked out for the best in the end, but if I had waited even another day we might have been up a creek.

Specifically, Tre Cime di Lavaredo and Lago Di Braies (also called Pragser Wildsee Lake) require advance reservations for parking. If you aren’t able to secure parking, it is possible to access them by bus as well but the timing and bus stops may not be ideal depending on your schedule and where you’re staying.

At Lago di Braies you’ll need to book a shuttle bus even if you take public transit to get there. If you plan to drive yourself, you’ll want to book early enough to secure a spot in P2 (right on the lake) to avoid the infrequently scheduled shuttle bus from P1. We pulled into P1 just as a shuttle was loading and leaving, so we had to wait another 30 minutes for the next one to arrive and then again during the shuttle’s lunch break for our return.

One really cool feature at both of these controlled access areas is that they automatically scan your license plate and raise the barricade when you pull up. You can add the license plate after picking up your Italy rental car if you book your hike parking well in advance.

5. Messing up your directions

Here’s another one where I’m so grateful for my patient spouse.

When you’re driving to hikes in the Dolomites, it’s really important that you take a few minutes to confirm the destination you’re putting into your GPS app. There are a few things that can go wrong, and in our case they went wrong for the same hike: Cinque Torri. Thankfully it all worked out in the end but I’m here to teach you from my mistake.

You need to understand in advance where you will park for a hike and put that in your GPS. When we left Val Gardena and started heading east, I casually searched Cinque Torri and entered that into Apple Maps. Unfortunately it brought us to a random rifugio from which we could have hiked another 4 hours to our destination – somehow Apple Maps misinterpreted that trail as a drivable road. I have subsequently checked the same route on Google Maps and it doesn’t make the same mistake. In the end, this error on my part cost us an extra hour of some very harrowing (for me) driving.

Second, not all roads are open at all times of year. Numerous blogs and TripAdvisor questions state that you can drive to Rifugio Cinque Torri but they are mostly wrong. Sorry, colleagues. At least as of 2025, the road to Rifugio Cinque Torri is closed to cars for the exact season that the Rifugio is open – we learned this from a sign on the gate when we arrived. In August there’s a shuttle service that’s 10 EUR per person each way – yikes! Even the rifugio’s own website makes no mention of the road closure on its homepage, and I only found the information subsequently after looking on one page of their website. We had planned to drive up to the Rifugio for this hike because one of our family members was afraid of open chair lifts, but in the end they had to overcome it because there was no other practical way to get to the top short of a multi-hour hike straight up.

If you’ll be driving to a trailhead, double-check as many sources as you can for road closures. And whether you’re driving or taking a cable car to the top, be sure to set your GPS for the parking area rather than the trail!

6. Overpaying for cable cars

One of the coolest things about hiking in the Dolomites, especially for families or those who are infrequent hikers, is that you can often take ski lifts to the top of a high peak and then hike around to enjoy spectacular views. It’s a fabulous system.

But it isn’t cheap, and there are some things you need to understand before you start buying lift tickets.

First, each lift is independently owned and operated. That doesn’t generally make a difference because on a single hike you’ll usually take the same life up and down… but not always. For the popular Seceda hike in Val Gardena, we purchased a round trip ticket for the “main” lift to get a big discount compared with two one-way tickets. But once we were up there we decided to follow a different path down past beautiful rifugios and wound up taking a different lift (Col Raiser) down. I had considered that option before, but without being there I didn’t really know how much we’d prefer it. Since they are run by two different companies, our downhill ticket wasn’t valid at Col Raiser (though the kind attendant did give us a break… I think this happens often).

Second, if you plan to take a lot of cable cars it may be worth purchasing either the Gardena Card or the Dolomiti Supersummer. Those cards are expensive and the math to understand your breakeven point is complicated. This is the time to break out your Excel or Google Sheets skills. You have to factor in one-way versus roundtrip pricing, child discounts (free or reduced depending on the age and the lift), and how many days you’ll be using the lifts.

On our busiest day in Val Gardena, we visited both Seceda and Alpe di Siusi. Our family lift cost should have been 268 EUR (without the round-trip SNAFU) but if we had purchased the one day Dolomiti Supersummer card our cost would have been only 222 EUR. However, we were on the fence about whether or not we would get to Alpe di Siusi due to the forecasted afternoon storms. There are also three day (and longer) cards available but that definitely would have cost us more than paying for each separately.

The punchline here is to plan ahead as best you can, do lots of math and budget 50-100 EUR per person for cablecars.

7. Being unrealistic about your hiking abilities

This last point is perhaps the most important one of all: the Dolomites of Italy are absolutely stunning, but you need to be honest about your physical abilities so that you don’t get yourself into a bad situation.

Taking cable cars or ski lifts up and down can help immensely, allowing you to avoid the steepest parts of many trails and “skip to the good part”. But you may still encounter paths that are steep or are slick from rain – or perhaps both at the same time if you’re really unlucky (hello!). Also remember that you’re at altitude in the Dolomites, which can make things that much tougher for those of us who live at sea level.

Trails like Tre Cime di Lavaredo (6+ miles and several steep ascents) are no problem for avid hikers but could be incredibly challenging if you haven’t been doing any conditioning and dangerous if you aren’t sure-footed. I’m not saying that you should avoid the difficult trails, but look closely at distances and elevation changes while doing an honest assessment of your abilities – unfortunately you may find that some writers minimize the difficulty of hikes. Bringing along trekking poles can be helpful if you plan on trails that are steeper than what you’re used to, and quality broken-in hiking shoes are critical for both safety and comfort.

The good news is that there are plenty of incredible views no matter how much you’re able to walk. The scenery just stepping off the gondola at Alpe di Siusi took my breath away. The Seceda (if done out-and-back using the Furnes-Seceda cable car) is very manageable for all abilities. And Lago di Braies can be appreciated no matter how much or how little of it you walk around.

Overall our first visit to the Dolomites was just as amazing as we’d hoped! With the right planning and the tips I’ve shared above, your trip will be incredible too. Check out these additional resources to plan your trip:

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