A new study published in the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism examines how mountain hut managers perceive the crossing of tourism carrying-capacity thresholds in mountain environments, and the role climate change plays in making the balance between visitation and ecosystem protection more fragile.

The growing demand for outdoor activities is increasing pressure on natural areas and makes it increasingly urgent to rethink the tools and priorities of sustainable tourism management. In this context, mountain huts offer a unique vantage point: those who manage them are in daily contact with visitor flows and with signs—often subtle yet recurring—of environmental and operational stress.

The article Mountain hut managers as observers of overtourism in natural areas: Perceived tourism carrying capacity in the Italian Alps, authored by Giorgio Mina, Giovanni Peira, Stefano Duglio and Riccardo Beltramo, explores these perceptions with the aim of understanding which “warning signals,” from the managers’ perspective, indicate the approach to (or the crossing of) sustainability limits in mountain tourism.

The study is based on a survey addressed to Italian hut managers, designed to collect information on tourism demand and supply, perceived impacts, and the implications of climate change. The relationships between pressures and impacts were analysed through structural equation modelling, showing that the growth of pressures is mainly linked to evolving demand patterns, while environmental impacts emerge as the central reason behind declining acceptance of tourism.

Among the signals indicating the risk of exceeding carrying capacity are: visitor congestion, ecological degradation, and increasing operational challenges in the day-to-day management of the hut. In parallel, climate change is confirmed as a decisive external factor, capable of directly influencing both the sustainability of high-altitude tourism and the resilience of hospitality systems.

A qualifying element of the work is the decision to go beyond a “numbers-only” view of carrying capacity: instead of measuring solely how many visitors an area can withstand, the research proposes a systematic analysis of perceived limits, integrating managers’ experience into the assessment framework. This yields a clear indication for policies and destination planning: approaches are needed that place demand regulation, adaptive capacity assessment and climate resilience at the centre, while enhancing stakeholder involvement in management choices.

The article provides a more in-depth discussion of the keynote titled “Overtourism and Mountain Huts”, delivered by Riccardo Beltramo in Innsbruck at the International Mountain Conference 2025 (IMC25) on 17 September 2025, during the day dedicated to climate risks and sustainable development opportunities.​

Bibliographic reference

Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, Volume 54, pp. 1–11. DOI: 10.1016/j.jort.2026.101041. 
Authors: Giorgio Mina, Giovanni Peira, Stefano Duglio, Riccardo Beltramo. 
IRIS record with open-access PDF: IRIS UniTo – handle/2318/2138450.