Cassation

No compensation to the customer forced to drink mineral and not tap water

No rule requires, unless otherwise agreed, to provide tap water. Stress damages, for paying 7 euros per bottle, must be proven

by Patrizia Maciocchi

1 May 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

Stress about the high bill
The right to drink tap water
Lawlessness

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

No regulation imposes on the hotelier to provide the customer, who asks for it, with tap water instead of mineral water in bottles. Unless there is an initial pact to that effect.The Supreme Court thus dismissed the appeal, as did the judges on the merits, of a guest of a 5-star hotel who demanded the condemnation of the hoteliers to pay him 2.763 euros, as reimbursement of damages And this because during her stay, from 26 December 2019 to 3 January 2020, "she had been incessantly denied the possibility of consuming drinking water from the tap, being forced, on the contrary, to buy bottled water at every meal". All this for the 'modest' sum of7 euros per bottle.

Stress over the high bill

The lady really did not like the conclusion of the judges, who had ruled out that the failure to provide tap water had been the "source of actualeconomic damage oremotional stress for the mere fact of having paid EUR 5,712.00 for a luxury stay". For the defence, this reasoning led to the paradox that only by choosing a lower category hotel could one have the right to drink drinking water.

"Assuming and not conceding," the defendant writes in the appeal, "that the obligation for the hotelier to supply tap water does not exist, it cannot be denied that the failure to provide drinking water is, in any case, a inefficiency that deserves to be compensated" because "anyone staying in a hotel, regardless of class, legitimately expects to be able to drink tap water during meals, just as they take for granted that they will find a bed with sheets, a warm room, soap in the bathroom, etc.".

And to assert her right to quench her thirst with water from municipal pipelines, the customer also cites theConstitution. According to constitutional and national sources, 'water is a natural good and auniversal human right of each individual and that the free supply of a minimum vital quantity necessary to satisfy essential needs must be guaranteed, even in the event of delinquency'. The defence also emphasises that "it appears quite evident that the supply of drinking water is part of the characteristic services of the catering activity, rectius hotel business and in particular in the case where, said service is an integral part of a tourist package, regularly paid for, including half board treatment (excluding drinks)".

The right to drink tap water

A further clarification concerns the fact that the request for tap water had been made with the commitment to pay the price of the single jug. Furthermore, the Justice of the Peace had erred in not considering as "bizarre" the prohibition placed by the establishment on its customers to drink water from the tap during meals. A contractual prohibition, in his opinion - in any case null and void because contrary to the law, as well as counterproductive "for the interests of the hotel structure in view of the negative publicity that inevitably derives from it".

But even the Supreme Court did not agree with the defence's argument, which also contested the hotel's failure to prove that the tap water was not potable. For the judges, various elements weighed in, first and foremost, the absence of a contract between the parties, in which the hotel declared its willingness to provide customers with tap water. A commitment that 'would have entailed for the hotel the implementation of self-control procedures, nor was the outcome of a possiblemicrobiological examination of the host's water indicated'.

The absence of a law

In the judges' opinion, then, there is no rule of law requiring water to be supplied from the public water mains to hotel guests in the course of catering activities. Therefore, the thesis, affirmed in the appeal, of the free choice that the customer could make, simply telling the waiter that he refuses to have sealed bottled water at the table, even at the cost of providing it himself, does not pass. No asset damage therefore, because "non-asset damage is compensable only in the event of a non-minimal violation of a right ofconstitutional rank and, when such damage is determined by the violation of inviolable personal rights, it constitutes in any case a consequential damage, which must be attached and proven". Thus, the salty bill is not sufficient to prove stress.