Where is Lisbon's tourist tax going?

The money visitors pay to sleep in Lisbon has a new job. It's Tuesday, 29 September. Twenty-four degrees. Air quality: 55 (Moderate). Here's what you need to know.

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LISBON'S TOURIST TAX WILL FUND €25.8 MILLION OF TOURISM PROMOTION

Lisbon City Council has approved €25.8 million for a four-year programme to boost tourism demand, running to 2029. The money goes to the Lisbon Tourism Association (ATL). It comes from the city's Tourism Development Fund (FDTL), which manages the revenue from Lisbon's tourist tax, the nightly charge added to every hotel and short-term-rental stay.

The proposal passed with the votes of the centre-right coalition that runs the city (the Social Democrats (PSD), the CDS-People's Party (CDS-PP) and the Liberal Initiative (IL)), plus the hard-right Chega. The Socialist Party (PS) abstained. It now goes to the Municipal Assembly.

On the council's list: help with selling Lisbon to the travel trade, a digital project, marketing agencies in key countries abroad, promotion for festivals and cultural events, bids to host events, local initiatives, the "Follow Me" visitor guide, and international advertising campaigns. The budget is bigger than the last programme, which wrapped up in 2025. The council's case is that promotion now happens mostly online and that Lisbon should chase visitors who spend more and travel further, rather than simply more of them. Americans were the Lisbon area's biggest market in 2025, with 16.2% of overnight stays.

The council hasn't said how much of the €25.8 million goes to each item. That's the Communist Party's (PCP) main objection. Councillor João Ferreira asked whether €26 million on promotion is justified when the city has other pressing needs, and accused ATL of getting "easy money" while small associations are scrutinised harder for far smaller grants. ATL has been run since December 2025 by António Valle, a former chief of staff to Mayor Carlos Moedas.

The Socialists took a different line. By their count the tourist tax raises €83 million, so this programme takes about a third of it, while housing, public space, street cleaning, transport and safety still need money. They argue the tax exists to repair what tourism costs the city, not to feed more of it.

The same meeting approved €8 million from the same fund for this year's Web Summit. The PS backed that one, while Livre, the Left Bloc (BE), the PCP and Chega voted against. Even the hotel industry's representative on the fund's committee has questioned how much of the Web Summit bill lands on the tourist tax.

Unless you stay in a hotel here, you don't pay the tourist tax. But the fund is meant to do two things: promote Lisbon, and ease the pressure tourism puts on the people who live in it. This summer's figures showed Lisbon was the only region in Portugal where hotel revenue per room fell. Supporters will read that as a reason to promote harder. Critics will say it's a reason to spend the money on the city itself.

Bottom line: the Municipal Assembly vote is where the missing breakdown can still be demanded.

⚡ QUICK HITS

Ryanair has fares from Lisbon from €14.99, but only until Wednesday. Bookings close on 30 September, for travel until 30 November. From Lisbon, Málaga, Seville, Tangier and Valencia are €14.99. Agadir and Marrakech are €16.99, and Madrid is €17.44. Alicante, Barcelona and Madeira are €19.99, Toulouse is €22.99, and London is €24.99. Faro and Porto have longer lists, with Porto covering 37 destinations, so check them if you're willing to travel. Book on Ryanair's own website.

Tech jobs are growing fastest and paying among the best. Randstad's latest salary study puts the IT roles it surveyed at €40,000 to €55,000 a year, and information and communication jobs rose by 27,600 year-on-year to 237,200 in the second quarter, a 13.2% jump. Pharmaceuticals and research run from €35,000 to €60,000, banking and insurance from €35,000 to €50,000, engineering and industry from €33,500 to €49,500, and healthcare from €30,000 to €46,000. Healthcare added the most jobs, 43,200. Finance, HR and legal roles run from €24,000 to €33,500, and sales from €23,000 to €39,500. All figures are gross, before tax and social security.

Moedas says he'll act on scooter "chaos". At the launch of a UN road-safety campaign at city hall, the mayor said the city centre still has a serious problem with badly parked scooters and riders going the wrong way down streets. His warning to operators: make it impossible to ride against the traffic, or the council will step in. He didn't say what action he'd take or when. He pointed out that he halved the number of shared scooters after taking office by negotiating with operators. Last week, the Automobile Club of Portugal (ACP) said it had collected around 20,000 signatures for a city referendum on the shared-scooter scheme.

Hypno Summit Portugal — The Best Things Are Rarely the Ones You Planned

Think back to what actually changed things for you. The conversation you nearly didn't have. The class you almost skipped. The weekend you booked on a whim and still think about. Turning points rarely announce themselves, they come from saying yes to something a little outside the routine, and only make sense later.

Hypno Summit Portugal could be one of those. Or it could just be a really good weekend. Either way, today is the day to decide, because the reader price ends this week.

If you have missed the earlier mentions: it's two days in Lisbon, 3 and 4 October, billed as Europe's boutique hypnosis experience, with eight international experts in hypnosis, psychology and trauma recovery. The sessions tackle the patterns people most want to shift, anxiety, self-sabotage, confidence, the relationship with money or the body, rebuilding after a hard time, and you leave with tools you can use, not just notes you might not reread.

The room itself is half the reason to go. It is kept small on purpose, so you are close to the speakers and surrounded by people working through the same things you are. Nobody there is going to raise an eyebrow at your questions, because they turned up to ask the same ones. It's nice to find people on the same wavelength, especially in a city as transient as Lisbon.

The exclusive reader offer closes soon: €333 with the code LISBONLETTER, until the end of 30 September. After that it goes back up, and with the summit days away and places limited, now is the time to move.

→ Book before the price goes up

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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

STREET SMASH BURGERS (CAMPO DE OURIQUE)

Some nights you can't face cooking and all you want is a burger. Street's founders picked up the idea on a trip to Australia, fell for Lisbon while staying here during Covid, and opened their first shop on Rua Almeida e Sousa in March 2024. It has since spread across the Lisbon area and on to Porto, the Algarve and cities in Italy, Switzerland and Spain. So yes, it's a chain now, but it's a Lisbon one, and this is where it started.

The menu is short on purpose. There are three burgers, each with two beef patties pressed flat onto a hot griddle so the edges go crisp. The Street comes with American cheese, onions, pickles, ketchup and mustard; the Classic with lettuce, tomato and their Street sauce; the Bacon with their Secret sauce. Fries come plain, sweet potato, or truffle with Parmesan. Burgers start at €9.90, and a combo with fries and a drink runs from €13.90 to €15.90.

Worth knowing before you go: seating is limited, and plenty of people take their burgers outside. It's open every day from 11:45am to 11:15pm, and takeaway and delivery are available. The house beer is a pilsner brewed with Dois Corvos in Marvila.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: any of the three burgers can be made veggie or served on a gluten-free bun, so nobody in the group has to sit it out.

📅 WHAT'S ON

See you tomorrow morning.

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