Alpine huts can be booked online

A summer holiday escape: Alpe Salei, in canton Ticino, which is 1,777 metres above sea level Switzerland Tourism/Andre Meier

Switzerland Tourism, the Swiss national tourism organisation, has launched a platform for renting Alpine huts in Switzerland – a kind of Swiss Alpine hut Airbnb.

alp.holidaybooking.ch.External link has more than 250 offers. “The objects are in all categories, from very simple accommodation to a very high standard,” said Switzerland TourismExternal link in a statementExternal link.

The cheapest hut in Oberengadin costs just CHF182 ($182) a week and has enough space for six in shared rooms. At the top end, guests can expect to shell out up to CHF770 a week.

“The huts correspond to the romantic notion of an accommodation that is isolated, and in nature,” the organisation continued.

The new platform is part of a wider summer campaign, launched on Thursday, to attract tourists into the Swiss countryside, under the slogan “Nature wants you back”.

According to Switzerland Tourism’s director Jürg Schmid, “the demand for ‘experience tourism’ is an opportunity to make our regional knowledge known worldwide and to create added value in the regions in which this knowledge is anchored.”

Tourists can also go onto the new platform My Swiss ExperienceExternal link to make their own Gruyère or go fishing on Lake Constance in the early morning or can use the Wildlife WatchingExternal link platform to find help in observing the Alpine ibex, marmot and bearded vulture, to name but a few.

Switzerland Tourism is investing CHF45.5 million ($46 million) in the summer campaign. It said that it was hoping for a turnaround in the summer following a bad winter, for which the strong Swiss franc and climate change – which leads to shorter winters – were key factors