The Covid-19 pandemic caused restrictions on air and road travel and destinations located in the mountains became a kind of refuge and also for those who, after the most critical period of social isolation, felt the need to leave home and travel. The mountains located close to large urban centers constituted favorable environments for a demand that sought to escape from urban agglomerations and sought locations with more rural characteristics, tranquility and quality of life, found in small towns. The objective of the present research was to analyze the strategies of public and private agents in the face of the health crisis resulting from Covid-19 in mountain tourist locations in the Brazilian Northeast. A descriptive-exploratory study was carried out to characterize and dimension tourism, with a qualitative and quantitative approach, based on an analysis of the tourist regions of the mountains listed in the Mapa do Turismo Brasileiro in the previous period and during the pandemic (from 2017 to 2022), with field observations and interviews in the municipalities of Gravatá (PE), Baturité and Guaramiranga (CE), Martins, Portalegre and Serra de São Bento (RN). The public sector's strategies to face the pandemic in the analyzed destinations were in the sense of creating a regulatory framework (laws and decrees), in addition to sanitary barriers. The private sector, on the other hand, acted to train itself and ensure the adoption of biosafety measures and protocols, especially in lodging and food establishments. The pandemic caused a temporary suspension of services, with job losses and the closure of companies, but the tourist demand in the mountains had a slight change, with a reduction of groups, but the flows were gradually resumed, based on the demand itself and the pressure from tourism entrepreneurs. Despite the crisis, the pandemic also presented positive aspects, mainly related to health care during travel and the concern about human agglomerations, although it did not generate planning actions that foresee new crisis scenarios. The pandemic also boosted the emergence of a new tourist destination in the Potiguar mountains: Polo Serras do Agreste Potiguar.