Industry News
A quiet but significant shift in the European ski landscape is underway in northern Italy. At the close of the 2025–26 winter season, the long-running Ortler Skiarena has officially rebranded as the Südtirol Skiarena, signaling not just a name change, but a fundamental expansion in scope, ambition, and identity.
What was once a regional lift alliance centered in western South Tyrol has now grown into a network that spans the entire province and even crosses international borders. With the addition of Ratschings-Jaufen, Speikboden, and Klausberg, the Südtirol Skiarena now links 18 ski areas across South Tyrol, plus partner resorts in Austria and Switzerland. The former Ortler Skiarena offered around 400 kilometers of slopes. The expanded Südtirol Skiarena now approaches 500 kilometers of terrain, placing it firmly as South Tyrol’s second-largest ski network behind Dolomiti Superski, but with a very different positioning.
Where Dolomiti Superski leans heavily into international tourism and large interconnected circuits, Südtirol Skiarena is clearly targeting a different audience: locals and regional skiers. The network brings together a mix of smaller community hills, mid-sized resorts, and a handful of higher-altitude destinations into a single, flexible product designed for frequent, repeat use rather than one-off destination trips.
That shift in focus is reflected in the most consequential change to the offering. Starting next season, the traditional winter-only pass will be replaced by a 365-day ticket, allowing lift access year-round. In practical terms, that means the same pass used for skiing in January can be used for hiking, biking, and sightseeing in July. It’s a model built less around holiday visits and more around everyday access to the mountains for local residents. The new name, Südtirol Skiarena, also targets local residents, deliberately going for a German name rather than leaning into Italian branding, which Dolomiti Superski for example considers to be more appealing to foreign tourists.
The new Südtirol Skiarena unifies an expansive area, and includes two glacier areas — Sulden and the Schnalstal Glacier. The combined ski area reaches a peak elevation of 3,250 meters (10,663 feet). Thanks to the glacier areas, skiing on the unified ski pass will be possible nearly year-round. These high-altitude anchors provide snow reliability in an era where lower-elevation resorts are increasingly vulnerable to warm winters. Elsewhere, the network is defined by variety. Resorts like Meran 2000, Schöneben-Haideralm, and Watles offer broader terrain and modern lift systems, while smaller areas such as Pfelders, Vigiljoch, and Reinswald maintain a slower-paced, community feel. The newly added eastern resorts — Ratschings-Jaufen, Speikboden, and Klausberg — bring additional scale and infrastructure, helping extend the network across the full width of the province.
What emerges is not a mega-resort in the traditional sense, but something more flexible: a connected ecosystem of mountains. Skiers aren’t confined to a single base area but can move between distinct regions, each with its own terrain, culture, and rhythm.
The introduction of a year-round pass also reflects a broader shift in the Alpine economy. As climate variability places increasing pressure on winter operations, resorts are looking beyond skiing to sustain long-term viability. By integrating summer access into the core product, Südtirol Skiarena is positioning itself as a four-season network from the outset — not as an afterthought.
In a region already dominated by one of the world’s largest ski passes, Südtirol Skiarena is carving out its own space — not by competing directly with Dolomiti Superski, but by offering something it doesn’t: a year-round, locally focused alternative built for everyday access rather than once-a-year trips.
