Restaurants and hotels in Italy have no obligation to serve customers tap water instead of bottled water, Italy\u2019s highest court has ruled.<\/p>\n
Judges handed down the decision after a long-running legal saga, which began in 2019 when a tourist asked for tap water during a stay at a five-star hotel in the Dolomites.<\/p>\n
Her request was refused, with a waiter telling her she would have to buy a bottle of mineral water costing \u20ac7 (\u00a36).<\/p>\n
The woman objected, pointing to the fact that she had paid \u20ac5,700 for her half-board stay at the Hotel Sassongher in the ski resort of Corvara in Badia during the Christmas holidays.<\/p>\n
She took the case to court, arguing that tap water should be regarded as a universal human right and that the refusal to serve her a carafe violated her consumer rights.<\/p>\n
She asked for compensation of \u20ac2,763 to make up for the financial loss of having to pay for water at every meal and the emotional distress of the experience.<\/p>\n
\u2018Universal human right\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who stays in a hotel should legitimately expect to be able to drink tap water during meals, just as it should be a given that there are sheets on the bed, a warm room, and soap in the bathroom,\u201d her lawyers argued.<\/p>\n
\u201cWater is a natural resource, and a universal human right of every individual.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the supreme court in Rome ruled that the Hotel Sassongher was not obliged to provide the woman with a carafe of tap water.<\/p>\n
Judges said that, under Italian law, there was no obligation for hotels and restaurants to serve tap water to customers, and the decision was up to individual venues. The court also rejected her request for compensation.<\/p>\n
Silvio Belardi, a lawyer acting for the Hotel Sassongher, said judges had ruled decisively that \u201cthere was no obligation for the hotel to provide tap water to its customers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hospitality venues in Italy vary in their attitudes to providing tap water \u2013 some do so willingly, while others insist on selling only bottled water.<\/p>\n
At the high end of the spectrum, some restaurants present customers with a menu of expensive mineral waters, like a wine list, from which to choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Restaurants and hotels in Italy have no obligation to serve customers tap water instead of bottled water, Italy\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,479,90,5438,56,54,55,231],"class_list":["post-607867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-italy","tag-science","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}