Bookatrekking Review: My Honest Opinion After 4 Hut-to-Huts
Last Updated on September 29, 2026 by Kimberly
Over three summers, I have hiked four self-guided treks with Bookatrekking: the Short Alta Via 2 and the Short Alta Via 1 in the Dolomites in 2024, the Palaronda Trek in 2025, and the Côte d’Opale in France in 2026. Three of them solo. I paid full price for all four as an ordinary customer, long before this company knew who I was. This post is my honest Bookatrekking review. They have since made me an ambassador for a fifth trek in the Vanoise,
I have traveled to more than 40 countries over the past decade, and I plan nearly all of my travel myself, and if I am being honest, sometimes it’s absolutely wonderful to have someone else do the legwork for you.
There I said it. So when I started planning my first hut-to-hut trek in the Dolomites, I didn’t know where to start.
Enter Bookatrekking.com: No rifugios or hotels to call in a language I don’t speak, no refreshing booking pages in January to find every bed already gone, no spreadsheet tracking which hut has space on which night.
In this blog post, I share my honest thoughts on Bookatrekking, after doing several self-guided treks with them so you can book with confidence. A lot of people ask if Bookatrekking is legit, and fear not, they are!
Everything You Need To Book This Trip
The gear and services I actually use on every hut-to-hut trek
The trek itself: Bookatrekking. Not an affiliate link. I have booked four treks with them at full price.
- Hotels before and after: I book my own bookend nights through Booking.com and Hotels.com when the trek package options cost more than I want to spend.
- Airport pickups and trailhead transfers: Welcome Pickups. Getting to the start of a trek is not included in any self-guided package, and I do not want to work out a train connection with a full pack on my back.
- eSIM: Holafly so I have data at the trailhead and in the valleys, which matters more than you think when a hut needs to reach you.
- Map case: Sea to Summit. A soaked paper map is no map at all.
- Power bank: The one I carry. Outlets in rifugios are limited and often shared.
- Pack: My Osprey. There is no luggage transfer on alpine hut-to-hut, so this carries everything for four days.
- Boots: These hiking shoes. Break them in before you go anywhere near scree.
- Poles: Hiking poles. Non-negotiable on the descents in the Dolomites.
- Water: My CamelBak. Refill at every hut you pass.
The gear and booking services above are affiliate links. I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, and I only link to what I carry and use myself.
What Is Bookatrekking?
Bookatrekking is a Dutch company that books self-guided treks. They handle the huts, the route, and the logistics in advance. The walking is entirely yours.
The model is different from the big self-guided operators you may have come across.
Bookatrekking works directly with local trekking companies and huts, so you pay local prices with a booking layer on top rather than buying a fully branded tour product. They advertise a lowest price guarantee.
In practice, this is why their pricing sits below most of the competition, and also why hut quality varies more than it would with a company that owns its own inventory.
They cover four broad formats: hut-to-hut treks in the Alps and Dolomites, walking holidays that move inn to inn with luggage transport, long-distance and pilgrimage routes, and guided expeditions like Kilimanjaro.
Routes They Cover
The route list runs through most of the names you would recognize. In Italy alone, they book the Alta Via 1 and Alta Via 2, the Palaronda Trek, Tre Cime di Lavaredo, the Dolorama Weg, and the Garda Trek. Elsewhere there is the Tour du Mont Blanc, the West Highland Way, the Camino, the Stubai Höhenweg, and the Adlerweg.
Trip lengths start at three days and run to twelve or more. Most of what I have booked sits in the three-to-four-day range, which is the sweet spot if you want a real hut-to-hut experience without taking two weeks off.
On the longer classics, you can usually choose between a short section, a half, or the full route.
Geographically, they cover close to thirty countries in Europe, plus Morocco, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia in Africa, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam, Laos and Indonesia in Asia, and Peru, Bolivia and Chile in South America.
Who Bookatrekking Is For:
Bookatrekking works best for people who want to walk independently but do not want to spend three months arranging where they will sleep. Honestly, I want to tell you, dear reader, that Bookatrekking is for everyone, but if I were to get specific for the sake of Google:
- The First-Time Hut Hiker. If you have never slept in a rifugio and the whole system feels opaque, this removes the part that is genuinely hard. You won’t have to guess whether you booked correctly or whether a bed will be there when you arrive. That was me in 2024, and it’s why I kept going back.
- The Solo Woman Who Wants to Hike Alone but Not Be Alone. You walk at your own pace with nobody waiting on you, and you still have a support line, an emergency screen with local numbers, and a company that knows which hut you are meant to reach tonight. The dinner tables help too, more than they should.
- The Traveler With No Time to Plan. Chasing rifugios across three booking systems in two languages is a real job. If you already have a demanding one, small kids, or simply don’t want to enjoy the spreadsheet, paying someone to do it is a fair trade.
- The Budget Hiker Who Still Wants Support. Guided group treks in the Alps run several times the price; trust me, after I failed to secure a provider for a Group Trip I was trying to pull off, they are EXPENSIVE! Self-guided through Bookatrekking is the middle option between a full tour and doing everything yourself, and the price is genuinely why I booked them the first time.
- Anyone Working Around Limited Leave. If you are stationed in Europe, or just have a narrow window, the three- and four-day formats let you do a real multi-day trek over a long weekend. You are not choosing between a full week off and not going.
The route catalog is built the same way. Most classic routes, like the Alta Via 1, come in a short section, a half, and a full version, so you can pick your length rather than your ambition.
Beginner-graded routes like the Dolorama Weg and Tre Cime sit alongside T4 routes like the Alta Via 2 for people who want exposure and via ferrata.
There are family versions with gentler stages, and there are versions with hotels booked before and after so you are not scrambling for a bed the night you land.
At its core, this is for hikers who want to book it and go. You keep the independence. You hand over the phone calls.
Listen to my episode with Bookatrekking on the GoatCast
“What happens when solo travel, mountain huts, bad weather and a bit of stubbornness all meet on the same trail? Kimberly Kephart has spent years finding out. From the Dolomites to the French Alps, she talks honestly about what hut-to-hut hiking really feels like when you are on your own, carrying your own doubts, and learning to trust your own judgment.”
What Self-Guided Actually Means With Bookatrekking
Self-guided means there is no guide and no group. You walk your own route at your own pace. You’re buying the logistics.
Specifically, they find and book your rifugios or hotels, arrange half board where the hut offers it, build you a stage-by-stage itinerary, and give you access to their app with offline navigation. Then you show up and walk.
What they do not do is guide you, carry your bag, or hold your hand on the trail. On the Dolomites treks, I carried everything I owned on my back for four days.
Some of their walks do come with a porter service. You’ll need to research what that entails and which ones offer that option.
How I Ended Up Booking Them in the First Place
We moved to Italy in 2023, and I knew immediately that I wanted to hike in the Dolomites.
I wanted the Alta Via 1. I started trying to book it in January of 2024, which felt early to me and was apparently not early at all, because it was already sold out.
That is the first thing anyone planning this needs to hear. Popular Dolomites routes sell out months in advance.
REMINDER: BOOK FOR YOUR ALTA VIA 1 or 2 6-8 MONTHS AHEAD OF TIME.
READ MY HOW TO MAKE A RESERVATION AT A RIFUGIO GUIDE
A guided group trip was out of my budget. So I looked at self-guided, and Bookatrekking kept showing up in my search results.
Whoever runs their SEO is doing a very good job. They were among the top results for options that popped up.
The price point was reasonable, so I booked the northern half of the Alta Via 2 Short instead and went from there.
What sold me, though, wasn’t the price. It was that I would not have to find the huts, call the huts, book the huts, or track any of it on my phone. Everything in one place, already handled.
IF BOOKING EVERYTHING ON YOUR OWN IS YOUR THING: CHECK OUT HOW TO BOOK MOUNTAIN HUTS IN THE DOLOMITES & MY MOUNTAIN HUT GUIDE
The Booking Process, Start to Finish
Booking is genuinely easy! I found it way too easy if you know what I mean!
You pick your trek and your dates. Your main job at this stage is checking timing and season, making sure the route is actually running when you want to go.
You pay a 25 percent deposit and get an email saying they are working on things on their backend.
Then a representative who specializes in that region emails you.
I book six to eight months ahead every time. That is not me being extra. It is what it takes on the popular routes.
- Response time. Around 24 hours, consistently, across four bookings.
- Cancellation. Free cancellation and a full deposit refund up to eight weeks before your start date. Inside eight weeks, cancellation fees may apply depending on what hut costs they can’t recover. Bookatrekking Terms and Conditions
- Customization. I usually add my own accommodation before and after the trek if their bookend options are more than I want to spend. It’s usually a few dollars/euros more.
- One thing to expect. If you book far ahead for a late-season trek, some huts may not be bookable yet because the current season hasn’t ended. That happened to me, and it wasn’t stressful because they kept me informed. But it means your itinerary can be partly provisional for a while.
Okay, but Bookatrekking can’t be that perfect?
Honestly, the only issue I have had is detailed below, and it wasn’t even all that bad.
On the Côte d’Opale, we showed up at our hotel in Wissant and were told our reservation didn’t exist.
I emailed the team. They sorted it out. It turned out the hotel staff was exhausted because they had stayed up watching France play in the World Cup the night before. They merely missed my name.
That is the entire story, and it is exactly why the support is worth something. It was a fifteen-minute inconvenience with someone in my corner.
The Bookatrekking App: What It Does Well and Where It Annoyed Me
When I started with them, they sent paper PDF maps and a booklet. Now everything lives in the app, and it’s better. It’s the biggest change I have seen in three years of booking with them.
- What is in it? Your full itinerary, stage descriptions, offline GPS navigation, downloadable GPX tracks, packing lists, payment information, and an emergency screen with local emergency numbers for wherever you are, plus Bookatrekking’s own numbers.
- It works offline. All of it. But that is conditional on you downloading everything before you lose signal. I download the whole thing the day before I start walking, and I double-check it is all there before anything goes into airplane mode. Do not be the person figuring this out at the trailhead with one bar.
- Battery. In airplane mode, no problems. Off airplane mode, it drains noticeably. Charging in huts is free, but outlets are limited. Some huts have a room with a shared power strip. Bring a battery bank, and don’t count on a plug next to your bunk.
- Reliability. Across four treks, it has never been slow and has never failed to load a stage.
Curious about what to pack for a Hut to Hut on the Alta Via 1?
Two honest gripes.
The first time I used it, I could not figure out how to download the GPX tracks, and I felt genuinely overwhelmed. It is simple once you have done it once. It was not obvious the first time.
The second is Komoot. I push the GPX into Komoot because Komoot works flawlessly for navigation and has never once put me on the wrong trail. But the trip doesn’t record back as an activity, so if you like keeping a log of what you have hiked, you do that separately. I wish the two talked to each other properly.
I still buy a physical map for every trek even with a perfectly good app in my pocket. The art of reading a map is dying, and we are all worse off for it. Learn to navigate with paper.
My Navigation and Hut Kit
The things I will not start a hut-to-hut trek without
- A paper map, in a Sea to Summit map case. I buy a map for every trek even with the app downloaded. The case matters because a soaked paper map is no map at all, and you will get rained on.
- A power bank. Outlets in rifugios are limited and often shared in one room. Do not assume a plug by your bunk.
- My Osprey pack. There is no luggage transfer on alpine hut-to-hut, so this carries everything for four days.
- My CamelBak. Refilled at every hut I pass.
Some links here are affiliate links. I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, and I only link to gear I actually carry.
Do You Even Need the Navigation?
The trails I have hiked with them are well enough marked that I often just follow the posted signs and keep my phone in my pocket. Sometimes the app’s track and the posted route differ slightly, and when that happens, I go with the signs.
HOWEVER, I think it’s wise to carry a map or have some sort of app navigation!
About Those Distances
If you read their reviews, you will see the same comment over and over: people’s watches record two to three kilometers more per day than the itinerary says.
My watch and their numbers were different too. Their figures come from official trail sources, and GPS watches over-record on switchbacks and scree, which is most of the Dolomites. So some of it is measurement drift.
But when that many people report the same gap on that many different devices, I am not going to tell you it is all your watch. The practical advice is the same either way. Expect to walk more than the itinerary says, and pad your day accordingly. If a stage is listed at six hours, do not plan anything for the evening.
How Much do Hikes with Bookatrekking Cost?
Prices change by season and departure date, so check the current price on the route page before you plan around any number here.
For context, as of September 2026, the full 8-day Alta Via 1 lists at €1,195; the same trek with hotels before and after is €1,535; the 6-day Half Alta Via 2 is €690; and the 3-day Short Alta Via 2 is €308.
- What the price covers. Hut bookings, half board where the hut offers it, your itinerary, and the app.
- What it does not. Getting to the trailhead, any transfers, cable cars, buses, taxis, lunch, travel insurance, and anything personal (unless stated otherwise!)
- What I actually spend on top. I bring €150 to €200 in cash for a Dolomites hut-to-hut trek. On the Côte d’Opale, my husband and I spent around €300 between us on food plus hotel parking over the whole trip, but that was our anniversary, and we weren’t being careful.
- Cash or card. Cash in the rifugios. Card is fine on inn-to-inn routes. Some huts only take cash, and you will not find an ATM at 2,400 meters.
- Rooms. Dorms by default. Private rooms are available on request at €75 extra per room per night, subject to availability.
- No solo supplement. You are not penalized for hiking alone, which is not true of every operator.
- What people forget to budget for. The food. You will want the good stuff, and you should have it. Also taxis and souvenirs.
- Is it cheaper to do it yourself? Yes, a bit. I have priced it out. The gap isn’t enormous, and I happily pay it so I don’t have to call rifugios.
A Note About Getting the Hut You Expected
When I booked the Short Alta Via 1, Rifugio Lagazuoi was full, so they put me at Rifugio Scotoni instead. They told me before I paid.
The walking day was effectively the same, because you still go up over the Lagazuoi massif and drop down to Scotoni on the other side. But you should know this happens on popular routes, and it is not the company being difficult. It is availability. If you have a specific hut in mind, book early.
What to expect while staying at Rifugio Lagazuoi
Using Bookatrekking as a Solo Female Hiker
This is the part I haven’t seen anyone else write about, and it’s why I keep booking with them.
The dinner table thing. This is the one nobody advertises. Some of the Rifugios group their bookers together at rifugio tables. I keep meeting other hikers who ended up seated with me because we all booked through Bookatrekking. If the thing that scares you about solo hut hiking is eating dinner alone four nights in a row, that quietly solves it. You are surrounded by so many people.
Who you will meet. So many good people. Especially solo women and women hiking with friends. The trail is full of us.
If you have never slept in a mixed dorm. Take a deep breath. You are not doing anything wrong. It is okay to be the new person. Nobody is paying attention to you. And be prepared for butts and boobs, because people change where they change!
Eating alone in a rifugio. People will talk to you. They are curious about where you are from and what you are doing. I have never once had an awkward dinner or breakfast.
- Hiking Tre Cime Solo: The Guide for Solo Female Hikers
- Palaronda Trek: 4 Days on the Palaronda Solo
- Solo on the MADE trek in Northern Italy: a 3-day Hut to Hut and introduction to the MADE Trek
Who Should Skip Bookatrekking
As I previously stated I think, lots of people will love bookatrekking and the options they provide. However google likes lists:
- Anyone who wants luxury. This is not four-star boutique service. The huts are mountain huts. Some are lovely, some are basic, and you take what is available on the route. However, I feel like this is subjective!
- Anyone who needs to change their days on the fly. Your huts are pre-booked, which is the entire point, but it also means you cannot decide on day two that you would rather split a hard stage over two days. I ran into the flip side of this on the Alta Via 1, where my option was to come off the mountain rather than adjust. If you want that flexibility, book your own huts and accept the work that comes with it.
- Anyone who genuinely enjoys the planning. Some people love the research. If that is you, save the money.
Would I Book Them Again With My Own Money?
Yes. Without hesitating.
And here is the honest addition, which I think matters more. After four treks with them, I now feel confident booking Dolomites routes entirely on my own I even planned a fall trip to Lago Federa. I know how the rifugio system works. I know how far ahead to book. I know what a hut night actually involves.
That is not a mark against them; it’s just the product working. I paid them to take the logistics off my plate while I learned how to do this, and now I have learned. I will still use them for routes I don’t know, regions I haven’t hiked, and anything where the booking is genuinely difficult.
Booking through Bookatrekking gave me the confidence I needed, and I think anyone who is like me, a solo female hiker, this may help you spread your wings a bit and take out the complications a bit.
Bookatrekking Summer 2026 Ambassador: The Tour du Vallaisonnay
I just got done hiking the Tour du Vallaisonnay in the Vanoise as a Bookatrekking ambassador.
You can check out what to expect on that hike here
Who knows if I’ll be an ambassador next year but that would be so cool!
Bookatrekking FAQ
Yes. They are a Dutch company incorporated in 2018, with a Trustpilot rating of 4.55 across 235 reviews at the time of writing. I have booked four treks with them personally.
If you value not having to find, contact, and book individual mountain huts, yes. Booking it yourself is slightly cheaper and considerably more work.
No. Every trek is self-guided. You walk alone or with whoever you brought. That being said there are a few hikes, like in Georgia that are with a guide!
Not on Dolomites hut-to-hut treks. You carry everything. Their inn-to-inn walking holidays are a different product and some do include luggage transport.
Free cancellation and full deposit refund up to eight weeks before departure. Inside that window it depends on unrecoverable hut costs. Refunds once you have started walking are not guaranteed.
Six to eight months for the popular Dolomites routes. The Alta Via 1 sells out by January for the following summer.
Yes, if you pick the right route. Beginner-graded options like the Dolorama Weg and Tre Cime exist alongside the harder Alta Via routes. Choose by the terrain in the stage descriptions, not by the name of the trail.
