Lisbon Tourism, Local Frustration and Tings Lisbon

We did not come to Lisbon to extract something

When you walk around Lisbon today, the walls are talking.

On posters. On stickers. On graffiti. On flyers. In protest marches. Sometimes the words are angry. Sometimes they are clever. Sometimes they are unfair. But most of the time they come from a feeling we understand very well.

Lisbon has changed.

We have been coming here since 1990. Long before we opened Tings Lisbon in Graça in 2017. Long before Lisbon became a city on every travel list, every Instagram account and every weekend escape plan.

Back then Graça was different. Not undiscovered, because people lived here and knew very well what they had. But it was still relatively unexploited by tourism compared to other parts of Lisbon.

Today the situation is different. And if you live here, work here, have children here, or try to pay rent here, it is impossible not to feel it.

We understand the frustration.

We also feel sad when all tourism is put in the same box.

Because there is tourism. And then there is tourism.

Why the anger is real

When we bought the old building that became Tings Lisbon, it was not an apartment building full of families that we turned into short-term rentals.

It was an old house owned by a French family. We bought it with the purpose of creating the project we had been dreaming about for years while we were still working in the corporate world.

We wanted to leave the hamster wheel and do something meaningful.

For us, Tings was never just about beds. It was about creating a place where we could work with the things that interest us: music, art, food, design, conversations, travelers, locals and the small details that make a house feel alive.

Thomas and Annette hanging the Tings Lisbon sign on the house we rebuilt in Graça.

Before Lisbon, we created Tings Kathmandu. A small hotel and tea lounge in Nepal. Not a normal hotel. More like a big house with a big family and a lot of friends.

That was also the idea in Lisbon.

In our original Tings concept we wrote that we wanted to create a sustainable business that could improve the life of the talented young people who came through our life. We also wrote that we were building a concept for a target group we knew very well: ourselves.

That may sound selfish. But it was not.

It meant that we wanted to create the kind of place we would like to find when we travel. A place with personality. A place with people. A place with breakfast, flowers and music. A place where hospitality is not reduced to a key card and a cleaning schedule.

Hotels and short-term rentals are not the same

We know this is not always how it feels from the street.

If you live in a neighborhood under pressure, a tourist is a tourist. A suitcase is a suitcase. A new hotel sign can feel like another small defeat.

But there is still a difference.

A hotel is regulated. A hotel employs people. A hotel pays taxes. A hotel has inspections, licenses, fire rules, union rules, safety rules and staff responsibilities.

We came from Denmark with a very Scandinavian idea of how a business should be run. Everything registered. Everything transparent. Everything by the book.

Then we arrived in Portugal and learned that reality is more complicated.

We still try to do things as correctly as possible. Legal contracts. Proper salaries. Respect for the rules that protect both staff, guests and the business. But we would be lying if we pretended that running a small hospitality business here can be done with the same clean lines we were used to in Denmark.

There are always practical situations, grey zones and old habits around you. Sometimes you can avoid them. Sometimes you can only reduce them. Sometimes you learn slowly how the system really works.

So no, we are not perfect.

But our intention has always been clear: to build Tings as openly and responsibly as we can in the country we are actually living in, not in the ideal version of the country we had in our heads before we arrived.

When we opened, we wanted to employ Portuguese staff. That was part of the idea. But it was difficult to find qualified people, partly because so many talented young Portuguese had left the country to find better opportunities elsewhere.

If we say we want to do things responsibly, we have to keep trying, also when the reality around us is not as simple as we would like it to be.

Hospitality is an old profession

Sometimes people say tourism should stop.

We understand the feeling behind that sentence. Especially when a street becomes too crowded, when rents explode, when a local café disappears, or when thousands of people arrive at the same time and leave nothing behind but noise and photos.

But stopping tourism is not realistic.

Together with prostitution, hospitality must be one of the oldest professions in human history. People have always moved, travelled. People have always needed food, shelter, safety, conversation and a place to rest.

The question is not if people will travel.

The question is: How?

What kind of tourism do we want? What kind of guests do we welcome? What kind of businesses should the city encourage? What kind of neighborhoods do we want to protect? And who benefits when the planes, ships, hotels, restaurants and apartments are full?

These are not easy questions.

We do not have the answer.

But we think it starts with being honest about the difference between a business that wants to be part of a neighborhood and a business that only wants to take money out of it.

The cruise villages

One part of Lisbon tourism we find very hard to understand is the cruise traffic.

Every day huge floating villages arrive in the city. Thousands of people walk through neighborhoods where people are trying to live normal lives.

Many of these visitors have already paid for food, drinks and entertainment on the ship. So they often spend very little money in the local economy. But they still use the streets, the viewpoints, the trams, the pavements and the patience of the people who live here.

This is not about blaming the individual cruise traveler.

Most people just do what is offered to them.

It is about asking why politicians allow this model to grow without asking what it gives back to the city.

Because from the street, it often looks like Lisbon gets the crowd, while others get the money.

We don’t believe all tourism—or all tourists—are bad.

One of the clearest examples is the Caminhos de Santiago. When we first spent time in Lisbon, the Portuguese Caminhos barely registered.

Today they’ve grown into a significant tourism economy—both in income and in numbers.

Unlike many cruise visitors, pilgrims change local communities in largely positive ways, and you often barely notice them; when you do, they’re indistinguishable from Portuguese pilgrims heading to Fátima.

They don’t all arrive at once, take the same photo, block the same tram, and vanish. They walk, stop, sleep, eat, talk and linger. A little money left in many places instead of heavy pressure being focused on single spots

According to American Pilgrims on the Camino, 530,919 pilgrims received a Compostela in 2025—6% more than in 2024 and about 90% more than ten years earlier—and the Portuguese Coastal route grew roughly 20% in a single year. Via Lusitana describes the Camino as a vital economic driver for rural areas in Spain and Portugal, creating new businesses such as albergues, restaurants and shops.

It’s not perfect: popularity brings pressure. But the Caminhos show how tourism can create opportunities in places that weren’t on the classic tourist map.

We saw that again on a four‑day road trip along the Spanish‑Portuguese border between the Douro and Tejo—small places we wouldn’t have linked with tourism are now part of a broader route economy.

That is tourism with a different rhythm, and much closer to the kind of tourism we believe in.

Thomas and Annette Tingstrup Tings Lisbon Portugal

Annette & Thomas aka Tings

TINGS – a concept for the free independent travelers

The monastery in Graça

The newest local conflict in Graça is the old monastery and the planned luxury spa hotel project.

We understand why many locals react strongly. An old monastery is not just a building. It is memory, identity, history and emotion. People want it to become something for the neighborhood. A cultural space. A public space. A place for locals.

We understand that dream – but it’s not realistic.

The sad truth is that beautiful old buildings need money. A lot of money. And the city and the country do not seem to have the money to save everything that should be saved.

So what happens if no private project is accepted?

Will the building be saved? Or will it slowly decay while everyone agrees that, in an ideal world, it should have become something else?

This is where the discussion becomes difficult.

Because sometimes the only realistic solution is not the solution we would have dreamed of.

That does not mean every hotel project is good. It does not mean local voices should be ignored. It does not mean money should decide everything.

But it does mean reality has to be part of the conversation.

GL — a playful, framed sticker on our art wall that turns “Alojamento Local” into “Gentrificação Local,” inviting a moment of reflection before you read on.
A tongue‑in‑cheek piece that points to a serious question: who benefits when neighbourhoods change? We framed it to spark conversation — not to answer it — before you read what we aim to do.

What we try to do at Tings Lisbon

If we were only in this for the money, Tings Lisbon would look very different.

We would not have 24/7 staff.

We would not make sandwiches for guests leaving before breakfast.

We would not welcome people arriving after midnight with a human being instead of a machine.

We would not spend so much energy on breakfast, real flowers, real art, real music, real books, conversations, plants, repairs, playlists and all the small things that do not fit into a spreadsheet but still define the atmosphere of a place.

We could replace a lot of people with key cards and automated messages.

Many hotels do.

We do not want that.

We still believe hospitality is about people.

We were reminded of this ourselves just the other day, when we arrived late in the evening after a long trip in pouring rain. We were exhausted, in a city we did not know, looking for a little help, a warm welcome and maybe just a cup of coffee.

The only thing we had was a code on our mobile.

That may be efficient. But it is not hospitality.

That is where we think Tings can do something good.

Not save Lisbon. That would be a ridiculous thing to say.

But maybe make one small corner of tourism more human.

We are part of the problem but we try to be part of something better

We are not innocent.

We run a hotel. We benefit from people traveling to Lisbon. We are part of the tourism economy.

So we cannot stand outside the discussion and point fingers at everybody else.

But we can say how we think about it.

We can say that we love this city and this neighborhood.

We can say that we understand the anger on the walls, even when it hurts to read it.

We can say that not all tourism is the same.

We can say that we try to employ people properly, pay properly, follow rules properly and welcome guests in a way that respects where they are.

We can say that we believe in independent travelers more than mass tourism. In curiosity more than consumption. In neighborhoods more than attractions. In conversations more than checklists.

And we can say that we are still learning.

Because Lisbon is changing in front of all of us. Some changes are beautiful. Some are painful. Some are probably unavoidable. Some are the result of bad political decisions. Some are the result of global forces that no single city can control.

We do not have a solution, but we do have a position:

We want tourism with consideration.

We want hospitality with responsibility.

We want guests who understand that Lisbon is not a theme park. It is a city where people live, work, fall in love, get old, raise children, argue, protest, paint walls, drink coffee, hang laundry and try to pay rent.

That is the Lisbon we love.

That is the Lisbon we want our guests to meet.

So maybe this is where the circle closes.

The walls in Lisbon are angry with tourists. We understand why. But when we look at the Caminhos, we also see that tourists are not the problem in themselves.

The problem is when tourism is allowed to grow without direction. Without limits. Without a plan for who benefits and who pays the price.

That is a political problem.

Good tourism can bring life, money, curiosity and new opportunities to places that need them. Bad tourism can destroy the patience of a city.

The difference is not only the tourists.

The difference is the choices made before the tourist arrives.

Love,

Thomas & Annette

Founders & Owners