Airbnb was a great idea. Genuinely. In the beginning it was about people opening their homes, connecting with strangers, sharing something real. The same goes for TripAdvisor, Viator, and all the big platforms that promised to make travel easier, more democratic, more human.
Then the money arrived. And things got complicated.
Today Airbnb has done to neighbourhoods what we spend our entire tours explaining — it displaced residents, emptied buildings, turned communities into hotels, and handed the keys of entire city centres to investors who've never set foot in the places they're renting out. Lisbon knows this better than most. You can feel it in the streets. The people who actually live here, the ones who make a city worth visiting, are being pushed further and further out so that someone somewhere can make a margin on a booking.
Viator and TripAdvisor work the same way — just with experiences instead of apartments. They give you a sense of ease and trust, a big logo and a review system, and they take a significant cut from every booking. That cut doesn't come from nowhere. It comes directly from the people on the ground doing the actual work. The guides. The small operators. The people who built something real over years and now have to give a large slice of every booking to a corporation that has never met their customers and never will.
We've been doing this for 16 years. We built this without any of them. And that wasn't an accident.
Easy for who?
The easy way is not always the right way
Big platforms exist because they're convenient. We get it. One search, hundreds of options, reviews, photos, instant booking. It feels safe. It feels easy.
But easy for who?
When you book through a platform, a significant part of what you pay doesn't reach the people you're actually paying for. It stops somewhere in between, in a corporation headquartered far from Lisbon, far from the Serra de Sintra, far from the Atlantic coast we've been driving along for a decade and a half. The experience you're buying stays the same. The money doesn't.
Choosing a big platform is taking the easy road. And the easy road in travel, like in most things, tends to lead somewhere a bit less interesting.
16 years. No platforms. Still here.
We exist because people like you looked a little further. Did a bit of research. Found us not because an algorithm pushed us to the top of a sponsored results page, but because you were actually paying attention to where you were going and who you were giving your money to.
That's what responsible travel looks like in practice. Not just choosing a local operator — but understanding that every booking is a small decision about what kind of tourism you want to exist in the cities you visit. Tourism that drains a place or tourism that gives something back.
We've been giving something back since 2008. Free tours for blind citizens. Trips for kids from low-income areas. Electric bikes. Cleaner streets. Not as charity marketing. Just because it's the right thing to do when you actually live somewhere and care about it.
That's only possible because we kept our independence. And we kept our independence because people chose to book directly with us.
How to book
You won't find us on Airbnb. You won't find us on Viator. You won't find a sponsored link.
You'll find us here, at wehatetourismtours.com, or at reservations@wehatetourismtours.com, or on WhatsApp if you just want to talk first and ask questions.
Every cent you pay goes to the people who actually show up for you on the day.
Travel responsible. Or stay home.