Where to go for an easy adventure holiday with a toddler

Along the way, we’re staying in three family-only hotels, part of the Familienhotels Südtirol co-operative, a group of family-run places that are little known to UK travellers, many of them next to the region’s prime skiing areas. All of them go to town on facilities for little people without scrimping on style or creature comforts for parents. As well as kids’ swimming pools, playgrounds, trampolines and toys, there are gourmet meals, outdoor pools and spectacular mountain views. The trade-off is the odd crying baby or toddler tantrum soundtracking your stay, but among the adults there’s a reassuring sense of tolerance and being in it together, rather than the eye-rolls you might get at more adult-focused hotels.

The Falkensteiner Family Resort Lido is a perfect base to explore and ski

It’s clearly an idea that’s working. Founded in 1997, the association has 27 hotels across South Tyrol. Members have to meet certain criteria and pay an annual fee, with the co-operative responsible for the marketing of the group. Many of the hotels are positioned with easy access to key skiing areas, including Val Gardena, Meran 2000, Alta Badia and Tre Cime (Three Peaks).

We had chosen the Falkensteiner, which is an hour’s drive northeast from the airport at Bolzano, the gateway to the Dolomites, and half an hour from the Kronplatz ski area, as a handy base to start exploring the magnificent otherworldly mountains on the eastern side of South Tyrol — and also because the hotel’s facilities sounded like something our son would enjoy. Getting around in autumn on buses and trains can be tricky, so renting a car is recommended.

The 118-room hotel, which opened in 2023, is built in a big, brown U-shape hugging a lido. Its undulating wave of a roof has a Sky Adventure Park on top, which includes the ski slope, a little open-air race track with sit-on cars, a play park with slides coming out of a castle-like tower, and an indoor ValoJump trampolining room.

The Dolomites have plenty of dark, rugged, snow-capped peaks

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Our morning circuit includes a trampolining session with giant computer screens showing our digitised selves leaping through Avatar-esque forests, and pushing my son on a blue plastic motorcycle around the race track. We also spend time on the ski slope, the hotel’s standout feature, which is covered in snow during winter but otherwise is a blanket of green plastic bristles. My boy is too young for the skiing lessons (children need to be five years old or above), but he happily settles for one descent after another in a big red inflatable ring. We do see one or two older children on the slope; even on an autumn break, children (and adults) can take lessons or practise turns. Later, I pull us across the lake on a rope-drawn wooden pirate ship-style raft.

If all the activity gets too much, parents can disappear into the adults-only spa, with a downstairs kids’ club available for children of all ages (free), or babysitting services (£21 per hour). At night in the restaurant, chefs serve sea bass fillets, steaks and crowd-pleasing pizza, with ice cream on demand from a little cart.

One morning, we visit the nearby Dobbiaco wildlife park, feeding the wild boar and Mongolian gerbils who live on the hillside, as well as mountain goats, Vietnamese pigs, llamas and deer (£7; suedtirolerland.it). That afternoon, I rent one of the hotel’s ebikes, my son tucked up (and quickly zonked out) inside the trailer, as we pedal beside the rushing Pusteria River, through forests and farmland, each town and village marked by the red roofs of Catholic churches.

The village of Rasun di Sotto is near the Kronplatz mountain

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We then stay for a couple of nights at Garberhof Dolomit Family Resort, an elegant boutique hotel with only 30 rooms in the mountainside village of Rasun di Sotto, close to the Kronplatz mountain. With the scent of pine drifting through corridors, a gleaming bar and a quiet indoor-outdoor pool, Garberhof could pass for a sophisticated adults-only hideaway if it weren’t for teddy bears everywhere, or the plastic cow, horse and sheep standing in the kids’ pool. With hardwood floors, creamy stone tiles and warm Alpine lighting, our suite has a balcony with views across the village cradled in a mountain-framed valley.

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One afternoon we walk around Lake Antholz, a soul-calming spot with clouds drifting over forested peaks streaked with snow. The scenery is astonishing, but my son is just as happy to be back at the hotel, playing in the sandpit and filling up sit-on cars from a pretend petrol pump.

I borrow an ebike and trailer the next morning to cross 20km of countryside to Gassl, where we take the cable car to Kronplatz. With my son loaded into a baby-carrier backpack, we walk around the summit, 2,275m above sea level, enjoying warm sun and blue skies, the ground sparkling with crisp fresh snow. We’d wanted to show our son some of the world’s natural beauty, and there’s plenty of it from up here, with dark, rugged, snow-capped peaks in all directions coming in and out of view as heavenly white clouds drift by.

Post Alpina in Versciaco is just 3km from the Austrian border

FAMILIENHOTEL SÜDTIROL

We visit the summit’s Lumen Museum of mountain photography (£14; lumenmuseum.it), then the bunker-style Messner Mountain Museum Corones, one of six local museums celebrating mountains and the people who climb them (£12; messner-mountain-museum.it). It was created by the South Tyrol-born climber and explorer Reinhold Messner and designed by the architect Zaha Hadid. Messner was the first person to make a solo ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen, the first to climb all 14 of the world’s peaks above 8,000m, and the first to cross Antarctica and Greenland without dog sleds or snowmobiles — a lifetime of what he called l’assassinio dell’impossibile (the assassination of the impossible). But has he made more than 25 ascents of Falkensteiner’s artificial ski slope, dragging a child in an inflatable tyre behind him? Not to my knowledge, so let’s call it a draw.

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Our final base is Post Alpina in Versciaco, which opened in 2006, 3km from the Austrian border, and a founding member of Familienhotels Südtirol. We’re staying in one of the little self-contained chalets clustered around a large dark-wood building containing the reception, restaurant and indoor swimming pool. Our two-floor apartment has wooden walls, floors and ceilings, a downstairs kitchen and lounge, a balcony overlooking the pool and a hot tub in the corner of the upstairs bedroom (for all that free time parents of young children get). During dinner, which includes pastries, cakes and sweets, Pina, a 2m-tall cow mascot, walks through the restaurant waving at and occasionally terrifying the children.

On our final morning, we travel to Rifugio Auronzo, the starting point for the popular 10km trek to the Three Peaks, the most famous formation in the Dolomites. Carrying my son in a backpack, I wonder if Reinhold Messner ever had a kid in his ear, quoting episodes of Bluey and singing Pump up the Jam on repeat during his expeditions. We pass the small white Rifugio Locatelli church and make our way up through a rocky plateau to get a blustery, front-on look at the Three Peaks. What a thing for a two-year-old to have set eyes on.

Back at Post Alpina, I leave my wife and son in the kids’ pool — him zipping down slides and playing with plastic boats — and swim to the warm outdoor pool, steam rising into the cool evening air. Warm light is falling on the pine trees across the hills, the Dolomites now jagged silhouettes against the sky. To have shared such a place with my son feels magical. Perhaps it will inspire his own lifetime of epic adventures.

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Graeme Green was a guest of Falkensteiner Family Resort Lido, which has full-board family rooms from £361; Garberhof Dolomit Family Resort, which has full-board family rooms from £354; Post Alpina, which has half-board family rooms from £375 (familienhotels.com); and SkyAlps, which has Gatwick-Bolzano one way from £154 (skyalps.com)

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