In opportunistic networks the existence of a simultaneous path between a sender and a receiver is not assumed. This model (which fits well to pervasive networking environments) completely breaks the main assumptions on which MANET routing protocols are built. Routing in opportunistic networks is usually based on some form of controlled flooding. But often this results in very high resource consumption and network congestion. In this paper we advocate context-based routing for opportunistic networks. We provide a general framework for managing and using context for taking forwarding decisions. We propose a context-based protocol (HiBOp), and compare it with popular solutions, i.e., Epidemic Routing and PROPHET. Results show that HiBOp is able to drastically reduce resource consumption. At the same time, it significantly reduces the message loss rate, and preserves the performance in terms of message delay. © 2007 IEEE.