Hotel that refused to give tourist tap water acted lawfully

The headline is slightly misleading: it was the restaurant in the hotel, rather than the hotel itself.

That's a bit of a shift. The restaurant is in the business of selling food and drink. The hotel has water fountains and would have directed her to them.

The restaurant still probably should have given her tap water anyway. It's a very expensive restaurant, the kind that gets a reputation for exquisite customer service.

Next time, put a 1 euro charge for it on the menu. It's not unreasonable: it takes up the waiter's time to go get it, they have to clean the glass, the glasses themselves are expensive and occasionally break (for which they do not charge you). They also charge for soft drinks, for which the soda is the least expensive part of it.

Serving only bottled water is normal in Italian restaurants.

As an Italian, this infuriates me. The availability of drinking water is provided for by the Geneva Convention; I don’t see what kind of legal reasoning can lead one to conclude that a commercial establishment has fewer duties than an occupying army.

An example where lawfully does not mean morally right!