How to book your Tour of Monte Rosa accommodation like a pro
Mountain huts in the Alps showcase the renowned alpine culture by bringing together European mountain sports and farming communities. It’s a big part of why a trail in the Alps is on the bucket list of most hikers!
While many of the wonderful Tour of Monte Rosa mountain huts will feature on your ideal self-guided hiking itinerary, what do you do if they have no availability when you go to book your own trip? Of course, you can change your dates or even defer your trip to the following year…but what if your dates are fixed, and you want to go this summer?
Over the last 5 years, I’ve been observing, advising, and booking accommodation on the Tour of Monte Rosa. I’ve developed techniques for designing creative itineraries that are inspiring, achievable, and available to book, even weeks out from planned trip dates.
In this blog post, I share accommodation booking tips for the Tour of Monte Rosa and my top 5 booking tricks for finding accommodation that will keep your trip alive. Here is a summary of what I’ll cover if you want to skip ahead.
Accommodation Booking Tips
The complete map of Tour of Monte Rosa accommodation (not just the refuges)
Best time to start booking your accommodation for the Tour of Monte Rosa
Accommodation Booking Tricks
Accommodation Booking Tips
Rather than give you general advice to ‘book early’, I’m going to share some specific information about accommodation on the Tour of Monte Rosa to help you prepare for making your own bookings.
The complete map of Tour of Monte Rosa accommodation
It’s essential to know all the accommodation options available along the trail in case your first choice is fully booked. We’ve put 110+ private room, shared room, campgrounds and bivouac locations along the Tour of Monte Rosa within our trip planning app. The goal is for it to be the most complete interactive map of Tour of Monte Rosa accommodation which also includes the links and information on how to book each one.
How do you book Tour of Monte Rosa Accommodation?
The 110+ locations we monitor are situated in 37 locations along the Tour of Monte Rosa trail. You can book all of them yourself. Only 41% of the locations have properties that can be booked online, meaning that the majority need to be booked via email, phone, or by submitting a form on their website. Of those that can be booked online, there are 2 places you can make these bookings;
Direct on a property website
51% of the properties we monitor have an online booking engine on their website
Most of these properties are located in the big villages (Saas Fee, Grachen, Zermatt, Macugnaga, Alagna Valsesia, and Stafal)
While some properties list their availability 12 months in advance, it isn’t until the end of the year that most properties have their next summer availability listed
On an accommodation aggregator website, like Booking.com
54% of the properties we monitor along the trail list rooms on aggregator websites like Booking.com
Most of these properties also have booking engines on their website (included in category 1 above). 4 properties only list their online availability on Booking.com - otherwise, you need to email or call them to book direct
Properties on Booking.com usually offer a generous free cancelation condition, which is a great way to ‘hold’ a booking while you check availability for all your other locations.
Listing on these aggregator websites usually increases as the hiking season nears with properties trying to sell surplus rooms they still have available.
Best time to start booking your accommodation for the Tour of Monte Rosa
To have the pick of accommodation, you need to have your itinerary finalised by the end of September and be ready to pounce on your preferred refuges as they start listing their availability/responding to booking requests from the beginning of October.
While you should start booking in October, it is important to be patient. Between October and January, some of the refuges only respond to email booking requests every 2-4 weeks.
Accommodation Booking Tricks
Not everyone can be prepared to book their Tour of Monte Rosa accommodation 9-12 months out. In fact, our research shows that only about 25% of hikers intending to do the trail in the following season are.
As the hiking season nears, it becomes more difficult to find properties with availability for a sequence of preferred dates. By January, it starts becoming harder to find beds at popular locations, especially if you want private rooms or are planning to stay at the busiest locations on weekends throughout July and August. That said, every year people are able to book weeks out and even during the start of the season with no issues - without visibility of online availability in most locations, you’ve just got to start to see.
Before you consider camping or deferring your trip to the following year, I recommend trying my 5 booking tricks to see if you can find enough availability to keep your dream of doing the Tour of Monte Rosa next season alive!
Rifugio Zar Senni: A small mountain hut located near Alagna Valsesia
1. Locations to book first
There are 3 locations/areas along the Tour of Monte Rosa that become the hardest to find availability as we approach the hiking season. Once you are happy with your itinerary, I recommend checking availability/booking these locations/areas first. Other locations can still become fully booked, however, if you are able to secure bookings in these 3 areas, you’ve got a good chance of finding availability for the rest of your hike too.
1. Rifugio Pastore
The longest section without hut/hotel accommodation (or transport options to shorten it) is the route between Macugnaga and Rifugio Pastore. The 22.3km / 13.9mi takes the average hiker about 9 hours to complete in one go. It requires hikers to gain a huge 1,750m / 5,740ft in elevation if traveling in a clockwise direction and slightly less (but still significant) 1,480m / 4,855ft if traveling counter-clockwise.
While the village of Macugnana has lots of accommodation options, the next closest option near Rifugio Pastore is staying in the village of Alagna Valsesia. Staying here adds 1 hr 15 mins of hiking if traveling clockwise, or up to 2 hours if traveling counter-clockwise. This pushes the hiking time over 10 hours for most hikers. There is a bus between Alagna Valsesia and the end of the road near Rifugio Pastore that halves this extra hiking for those needing to stay at Alagna Vasesia. The details are;
Operating: Mid June / End Sep.
First/last departure: Between 8am / 5.30pm.
Frequency: Non-stop (except for lunch break)
Cost: EUR 3 per adult one way
Journey duration: 15 mins
Check the latest timetable: bus timetable
Click to see the available accommodation in Alagna Valsesia (Bus drops off/picks up at Wold car park Alagna on the edge of town so try to pick something close to here!)
Those bivouacking the trail don’t need to worry about this section as Bivacco Emiliano Lanti lies in between Macugnana and Rifugio Pastore providing them an easy accommodation option to reach.
2. Theodulpass
There are two refuges that are located just on the Italian side of the border with Switzerland, next to the Theodul Glacier. Because it is best to cross the glacier in the morning, most people hiking in a clockwise direction stay a night here. Those traveling in a counter-clockwise direction who have hiked come up from Zermatt will usually find it too much to reach Resy on this day, which is the next location with accommodation over 6 hours away.
If you are unable to secure accommodation here for the night, the best thing to do is;
Clockwise from Resy: Use the gondola and cable car network on the Italian side to stay in Breuil Cervinia for the night and return the following morning to continue across the glacier and onto Zermatt. Alternatively, you could use the new Matterhorn alpine crossing to reach Zermatt on the same day.
Counter Clockwise from Zermatt: Jump on a gondola in Zermatt to reach Trocknersteg where you can start hiking with the Theodul glacier crossing, putting Resy within reach. Alternatively, you could continue on the new Matterhorn alpine crossing into Italy, making the hike to Resy an achievable 6 hours.
3. Mattertal Valley
Finding accommodation in the Mattertal Valley is the final area you should book first. The Tour of Monte Rosa follows the Europaweg trail along the Mattertal valley between Grachen and Zermatt, which is a popular standalone hike and also part of the Walker’s Haute Route trail.
Nearly every Tour of Monte Rosa hiker needs to spend a night on the Europaweg trail. It takes over 11 hours to hike Herbriggen to Zermatt and over 14 hours if you want to go from Grachen.
While Europahutte and Taschalp provide accommodation on the trail, Domhutte and Kinhutte are alternatives above the trail that add the least extra hiking to your plan. If all these locations are fully booked, descending into the valley to find accommodation at Randa or Tasch means adding to your plan an extra ~850m / 2,800ft elevation loss/gain on switchbacking trail, making it a tough detour.
A better transport alternative is to catch a local taxi from Taschalp (the only location on the Europaweg trail connected to a road) to Tasch for the night, returning to continue the following day. The taxi details are;
Cost: ~ CHF 60 one way (up to 4 people)
Journey duration: 20 mins
Accommodation options in the Mattertal Valley: Slide from our Tour of Monte Rosa Planning Workshop
2. Change your start location
Given the Tour of Monte Rosa is a circuit, you’ve got the opportunity to start your hike from different locations. If you start at a different location than your preferred choice, you’ll slide the dates you need to book each property.
In the below map, I’ve highlighted 5 locations that take a similar time to reach via public transport, based on which train/bus connections are available/you choose. Note that the transfer times from the Swiss airports to Alagna Valsesia would be much longer than 5 hours - this location is only recommended as a start location if transferring from Milan.
Different start locations with best airport transfer times: Slide from our Tour of Monte Rosa Planning Workshop
3. Change your hiking direction
If you reverse your preferred hiking direction, it will change the dates for each property you’re trying to book.
In the below example of a July 1st start date, see how reversing your hiking direction for a 9-day itinerary changes the dates you need to find an available property in each location. If you do reverse your hiking direction, be sure to confirm that your itinerary is still achievable, given your elevation gain/loss will flip.
Example of changing your hiking direction: Slide from our Tour of Monte Rosa Planning Workshop
4. Free cancellation while you wait
Booking 9+ different properties in a sequence of dates can be an anxious process.
Finding some properties that have a free cancellation policy allows you to quickly put some on hold while you wait to hear back from others to whom you’ve sent reservation requests via email. If some of those properties you’ve emailed are fully booked, and you need to change your dates, you can easily secure new bookings for your free cancellation properties at no cost to you.
The other way free cancellation booking can help is when you’ve been waitlisted on properties at fully booked locations. Given most of the properties you need to be waitlisted for are in the 3 ‘book first’ locations I’ve highlighted above, I recommend you plan to use those strategies and in the meantime, book accommodation with a generous free cancellation policy while you see if you are offered a bed from the waitlist.
Rifugio Gaspare Oberto: Overlooking the Dufourspitze (4,634 m) on the Monte Rosa massif. It is Switzerland's highest peak.
If you secure the accommodation on the trail, you can cancel at no cost - if not, you’ve got an achievable way of overcoming a fully booked area of the trail.
54% of the properties we monitor list rooms on Booking.com, which typically encourages them to offer generous free cancellation terms. You can find these properties on our accommodation map at the beginning of this blog.
5. Combine days to change your subsequent dates
If you find an area of the trail with no accommodation available on the date you plan to stay there, but they do have availability the day before, you can consider using transport to skip a day earlier on the trail and bring all your subsequent booking dates forward.
The 2 sections of the trail where it is easiest for a hiker to skip one or two days are between;
Resy and Alagna Valsesia: A connected chain of chairlifts, gondolas and cable cars can transport you over 2 mountain passes which otherwise take most people 2 days to hike.
Zermatt to Cime Bianche Laghi: With the new Matterhorn alpine crossing expected to open on July 1st, you will be able to catch a combination of gondolas and cable cars between Zermatt in Switzerland and the Plateau Rosa cableway base station in Italy, skipping the Theodul glacier crossing and a day of hiking.
If skipping ahead on the Tour of Monte Rosa leaves you with an extra hiking day I’d recommend adding the alternative route to Hornli hut (which is the Matterhorn basecamp), or the Glacier trail above Saas Fee (self-guided route checked and marked by local Swiss Alpine Club) to your itinerary. Both of these usually add an extra day and are memorable experiences!
Hornli Hut: Can you see it perched on the ridgeline in the top left quadrant of the photo?
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Author: Brendan Jones, Founder, The Hiking Club
A pizza-making, craft beer-loving, peanut butter connoisseur that has been exploring the great outdoors since completing the Duke of Edinburgh Award in high school. I started The Hiking Club to democratise hiking and the benefits that come from spending time in nature.