The travel website famous for its reviews of hotels and restaurants around the world has gotten into legal problems in Italy, as the government of the Mediterranean country has found enough TripAdvisor fake reviews end up fining the site over its inability to control that kind of occurrence.
Seeing as travelers around the world depend heavily on their use of apps like the popular TripAdvisor, fake reviews can be quite an issue for a country's tourism, as it's possible that reviews are fixed to better some places or others, even when they don't provide the best service - a fact which can ultimately lead to less tourism in the city or country.
According to The New York Times, the scandal regarding the TripAdvisor fake reviews in Italy is one of the first times the popular and often trustworthy site faces legal action in any place in the world; in all, review sites haven't often gotten penalized over hosting fake reviews, but it seems like Italy takes its tourism very seriously.
According to The Guardian, a large association of hoteliers made the complaint regarding the TripAdvisor fake reviews, all the while falsely stating that the contents of the site and its reviews were "authentic and genuine," which was obviously not always the case.
Apparently, the issue exploded over a long strain of "defamatory" reviews of different hotels, which had been ultimately proven to be false and generally lacking in foundation.
According to The Independent, the website will seek an appeal in regards of this decision; a spokesperson said that they found their company "extremely effective in protecting consumers from the small minority of people who try to cheat our system."
"We firmly believe that TripAdvisor is a force for good - both for consumers and the hospitality industry," the spokesperson continued later on.
In any case, the TripAdvisor fake reviews case is an interesting first step in the regularization of review websites in the world.
