Tourists are in the headlines again but rather than being cast as the bad guys, this time they may deserve some sympathy, with news emerging from the Portuguese capital that restaurants are charging city visitors way over the odds for a meal out.
Illegal whispers
One of the country’s weekly newspapers, Expresso, has reported that “several restaurants in the historic heart of Lisbon” charge different prices depending on whether it is a tourist or a local sitting down to dine. The variation in the cost of a meal out is not meant to be public knowledge, the news platform says, but is information transmitted through word-of-mouth, with lower prices either whispered verbally to local residents, or displayed on Portuguese language menus that are effectively hidden from common view.
The practice is illegal, experts in the hospitality sector have explained, and is not the same as an attraction or restaurant offering a “student discount” or even publishing a differentiated price structure for local residents. The problem stems from basing the different price on nationality, which is a “protected characteristic”, as well as making it a clandestine procedure. This amounts to discrimination.
Just another overtourism story?
The UK’s Guardian has also picked up the story in an article suggesting the tactic is part of the wider current backlash against a post-Covid surge in tourism that has left both infrastructure and people in many places overwhelmed. Travel Tomorrow has documented the application of tourist taxes, both official and unofficial, around the world, from Japan to Venice, as well as the growing disgruntlement and even guerilla protests taking place as locals try to “take back” their cities and tell visitors to “go home.”
Members of QSintra, a campaign group in UNESCO-recognised Sintra, a town to the west of Lisbon, have echoed complaints heard in Venice: that tourism is turning the place where they live into a theme park.
Locals are there to spend all year round
Seen through that lense, charging locals less could help to keep local residents happy despite the huge footfall arriving in their towns and villages. It also means restaurants can cash in on seasonal influxes, “without alienating local customers” who are there to spend money all year round.
Some commentators on the Expresso website seem to agree and say that paying a bit more in a restaurant is just another form of “tourist tax”, but others have said it is wrong, while still more have pointed out that the practice could be argued not to be discriminatory since it applies to native Portuguese people too, when they are not on their own home-town turf.
“This is nothing new. They’ve always done it, special prices for friends,” one commenter said, adding: “A Lisboner in the Algarve is like a foreigner.”
