Whether or not you are accustomed to visiting various travel websites before you travel, especially those bad reviews, is likely to determine whether you will continue to choose that hotel or not. But have you ever doubted the veracity of these comments? Now the world-famous travel website TripAdvisor (TripAdvisor) has been exposed to someone "falsified"!
TripAdvisor (TripAdvisor) is a world-famous travel website, which brings together 500 million "real tourism reviews" for global travelers, and provides people with rich and reliable overseas travel information. Hotels and restaurants can also be invited to comment on the service by e-mail to visitors via TripAdvisor's "Review Express" system.
However, Australia's federal court found that Australia's well-known hotel Meriton deliberately through a series of strategies to reduce negative comments on the TripAdvisor website in order to create a better image of the hotel.
Meriton is known as Australia's largest suite hotelier, operating more than 3200 suites in 13 areas, including Brisbane, Sydney and Gold Coast. It also won 22 Traveller's Choice awards in 2014, making it Australia's most award-winning hotel chain.
In recent days, a federal court ruled that Meriton Hotel was fined A $3 million for unauthorized manipulation to screen consumers' comments on the TripAdvisor travel site, in a serious violation of Australian consumer law.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Council (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission,ACCC) has pointed out that "thousands" of Australian consumer laws have been breached by the Meriton Hotel, resulting in a fine of as much as A $20 million. For this Meriton, the amount of fines between A $ three hundred and thirty thousand and A $ four hundred and forty thousand would be more appropriate.
In addition to the fine, the court has limited the filtering, and restricting behavior that Meriton will perform when providing a client's email address to the TripAdvisor site over the next three years. At the same time, Meriton also needs to set up a number of compliance and training programs.
The senior management of the hotel knows the past.
Judge Mark Moshinsky said the current evidence does not show that Meriton employees have "potentially or intentionally abused" their authority to screen email addresses when collecting customer reviews, in contrast to the fact that "hiding negative customer reviews" is in fact a consistent policy of the Meriton Hotel.
TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel site, attracting millions of consumers every month, while Meriton's "fake" operation has lasted for 11 months, "he said." Meriton's behavior reduces the negative perception of the quality of its services in consumers. And it makes people feel too good about the quality and comfort of their hotel, "Monshinsky said."
Meriton's senior management is also fully aware of the behavior and allows forgery.
Monshinsky believes that the consumer law violated by Meriton is serious and should be punished with greater intensity. The current fine of up to A $3 million may give them a clear sense that business practices that run counter to Australian consumer law are never allowed in today's online information society. "more and more consumers have access to information on goods and services through the Internet, so companies need to use the Internet while complying with the Australian Consumer Act." He said。
Review of the "falsifying" incident
Last year, the federal court found that between 2014 and 2015, Meriton had misled and deceived consumers by blocking TripAdvisor's e-mail to customers once the hotel thought customers might give negative reviews.
By inserting "MSA" (Meriton Serviced Apartments), in the customer's e-mail address provided to TripAdvisor, the old address will fail if the customer gives a negative comment.
In the nine months in mid-2015, Meriton was reported to have carried out the operation in 14000 customer emails at 13 of its hotels.
In addition, the company deliberately refused to provide customers' email addresses to TripAdvisor when the hotel facilities had broken down and there were no hot water problems.
"people usually choose hotels on the basis of comments and ratings from third-party websites, and false comments are undoubtedly misleading to consumers, and people need complete evaluation information," said Sarah Court, a member of the ACCC. "this case also serves as a warning to companies that ACCC will punish them if they are found to be making false comments on third-party evaluation sites."