ARBITRATION AND TOURISM: A FIELD TO EXPLORE contract in question as valid as the most appropriate for resolving the dispute. Arbitration also allows international trade usages to be taken into account. This last advantage assumes particular relevance for countries like Portugal, where common law is only in very special cases considered a source of law, i.e. a way of formation and revelation of legal rules. In the words of Dário Vicente8 “in international arbitration, arbitrators may take international trade usage into consideration in two situations: if the parties have expressly referred to it in the contract or in the arbitration agreement and it is not incompatible with the mandatory rules of the law applicable to the material relationship in dispute, but it can never be the sole criterion for assessing the subject matter of the dispute in international arbitration; if the parties have not said anything about it, usage can still be taken into consideration by the arbitrators as elements of interpretation and integration of the parties’ negotiating statements”. It is also important to mention that the international arbitration regime is also distinguished by the possibility, foreseen in article 39, paragraph 3 of the LAV, for the arbitrators, if the parties have entrusted them with this function, to decide disputes submitted to them “by resorting to the composition of the parties on the basis of the balance of the interests at stake”. Portuguese law thus expressly enshrines the admissibility of the so-called amicable settlement, a figure whose outlines are not yet well defined, but to which most authors and market players attribute great potential. Through this mechanism a dispute is judged in an attempt to obtain a solution that is accepted by both parties as a fair decision, capable of favouring the continuation of the commercial relations between them. In other words, the case is judged less bound by established law and more attentive to the specifics of the concrete case. Finally, another feature of arbitration that has promoted much of its success with transnational companies should also be highlighted: the confidentiality of proceedings and decisions. In fact, unlike state justice systems, which are public by nature, arbitrations are confidential. This characteristic is extremely important, since litigation, although often necessary, does not favour other aspects of the company’s operations and, in some cases, it even involves the disclosure of certain business secrets or company processes, whose knowledge by the market could easily weaken the company. In the chapter on disadvantages, the first to be mentioned is the cost of the arbitration process. As an example, in a dispute submitted to the International 8 Vicente, 2004, pag. 4.
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