Why We Hate Tourism Tours & why you should too

With its pro­voc­at­ive name and mav­er­ick spir­it, We Hate Tour­ism Tours (WHTT) has attrac­ted plenty of con­sumer press and travel blog atten­tion since it star­ted facil­it­at­ing authen­t­ic exper­i­ences in Lis­bon, Por­tugal eight years ago. In this “GT” Insight, WHT­T’s “philo­soph­er-in-chief” Ricardo Oli­veira con­siders WHT­T’s unortho­dox approach in the con­text of tour­is­m’s “new reality”.

We Hate Tour­ism Tours was cre­ated in 2009, and — like the brave nav­ig­at­ors some cen­tur­ies ago — neces­sity was what moved this group for­ward. The crisis of 2008, the will to cre­ate and do some­thing that we would be proud of in the future, the ran­dom events that put us all togeth­er, and the per­sist­ence and the strength not to run away and turn our backs on our coun­try, made everything pos­sible. Today, almost a dec­ade later, we can only be proud of what we have already achieved.

Nowadays many speak about what is the role of tour­ism and its “agents” in this new real­ity. We like to believe that, back then, it was already one of the most import­ant things for us. It made no sense to cre­ate anoth­er com­pany that would take people to the same places, give them the same speech that every­one else gave them, and be part of that “mono­poly game”.

Hell no!

We were determ­ined to do some­thing dif­fer­ent; to give people vis­it­ing Lis­boa a true vis­ion of what liv­ing in our city and coun­try was like. So we star­ted some­thing that would change the life of many people over the next years. We don’t believe we were the first want­ing to do this, but we were for sure one of the first in Por­tugal to actu­ally achieve it.

Growth “in a sustainable way”

Some­thing that since day one was con­sidered man­dat­ory for us was to grow in a sus­tain­able way instead of the “nor­mal way” around here. And that’s exactly what we did. We star­ted with one van and one jeep. From two guys driv­ing at the start, we soon added a third. Eight years later we now have a small fleet of six vans and two jeeps that we own 100%. And we have a team of 13 people work­ing — and grow­ing — with us.

We also cre­ated a micro-cred­it facil­ity that works in a really simple and fair way. Our workers\friends let us know their pro­ject and, if we believe we can help and that it’s going to be some­thing that brings hap­pi­ness to someone, we’ll help at the start; not only with cap­it­al but also with everything we can for our small com­munity to cre­ate new and dif­fer­ent pro­jects. Pedro Dias Costa, Clas­sic Ride, Unof­fi­cial Ambas­sad­ors, and Lis­bon Sus­tain­able Tour­ism are some good examples; many more things that we are proud of and that we believe make a difference.

Tourism “probably the biggest industry of our time”

Back in 2009, tour­ism in Lis­boa was still some­thing new. We remem­ber hav­ing friends ask­ing us what tour­ists we would take with us as it was not nor­mal to find them in the streets of our neigh­bor­hoods. All the places we went to with our friends were empty, all the small shops and “tas­cos” were empty; only “loc­als” would be there. It was easy for every­one to work, and every­one was happy, because we could do what we love. Trav­el­lers would get unique and “off-the-beaten-track” exper­i­ences. And it was still pos­sible for a com­mon Por­tuguese to live in the centre of the city and enjoy their lunch out­side. But you know how human beings behave, and how greed is always present in our lives. One way or anoth­er it is up to us to deal with it.

Today, Venice and Bar­celona are being spoken about every­where. What’s hap­pen­ing is a reflex of human nature; greed is a bitch. And it is hap­pen­ing in Lis­boa as well, from the fran­chised “loc­al” cool cafes spread­ing in every corner but owned by few, to the mon­strous real estate machine that has taken over our city. The interests of people are being put aside in order for busi­ness to expand; and it will, as long as there is one per­son, or many, mak­ing profit out of it.

Tour­ism is prob­ably the biggest industry of our time, and still so many people ignore this. Tour­ism is still seen as some­thing sec­ond­ary; it brings a couple of bucks and makes people smile but no more than that. It’s incred­ible the amount of money that spins around this industry, and it’s even more incred­ible to see the power that this industry has in the world gen­er­ally, and in cit­ies and places more particularly.

“Leave them kids alone”, but not totally

Pink Floy­d’s “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” says it all about our opin­ion on wheth­er gov­ern­ments and author­it­ies should be involved. Usu­ally when these two arrive, cre­ativ­ity is replaced by cas­tra­tion and the will to do some­thing genu­inely good for people is replaced by eco­nom­ics and num­bers. Believe us, we know it well.

We all agree that rules have to exist in order for things to work, and espe­cially in tour­ism. In a city like Lis­boa or Bar­celona, it’s man­dat­ory that they exist and there are agents that con­trol and super­vise it. But put­ting in charge gov­ern­ments that only see euros in front of them, and loc­al author­it­ies enfor­cing what they think is right — so many times without even con­sid­er­ing the needs of the people that elec­ted them — is not the way to go and we are sure of that. Fol­low­ing this road will lead to cit­ies that are noth­ing more than “theme parks”; where nobody really lives; and which are used only in the interests of some: Those who can afford to live the “trav­el­ler life­style”, which will get more and more expens­ive; and the greedy ones who want to exploit this new real­ity as much as they can.

In our opin­ion, the solu­tion is obvi­ous, lim­its have to be put in the per­cent­age of houses used only for short-term rent­als, and every­one work­ing in tour­ism should be forced to give some­thing back to the city and com­munity that it uses for work and profit.

How we are different

One could ask how or why is We Hate Tour­ism Tours different?

One pos­sible answer is: Well, we could have 60 vans, not six. We could use our jeeps every day instead of only two days a week and not care about pol­lu­tion. We could be pay­ing lousy wages to the per­sons work­ing with us. And we could keep the profits all to ourselves.

Since we don’t do these things, we believe that here lies the big dif­fer­ence. If more and more people start believ­ing that it’s pos­sible and desir­able to have a rich life, instead of being rich for its own sake, things will be much bet­ter for everyone.

We prom­ise.

Fea­tured image: Adap­ted from an image on the WHTT web­site.

About the author

Accord­ing to We Hate Tour­ism Tours founder Bruno Gomes, Ricardo Oli­veira is the “philo­soph­er-in-chief” of the out­fit: “Ricardo, is the fath­er of a beau­ti­ful little girl and a book lov­er. As a kid he used to play piano, read his books, and spend his free days help­ing his fath­er fix cars in his gar­age, car­ry­ing his oil-greased books every­where. He’s one of the co-own­ers of WHTT, and spends his days telling every­one what to do with amaz­ing long emails that are full of prose and poems, and teach­ing his little girl how to drive. And walk.”