The FINANCIAL -- The
Advertising Standards Agency has this week announced that it is
upholding the complaint that TripAdvisor's advertising messages about
the trustworthiness of its reviews were misleading, according to Caterer and Hotelkeeper.
Online reputation management firm Kwikchex, along with two hotels, challenged whether the claims "reviews you can trust", "read reviews from real travellers", "TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from real travellers" and "more than 50 million honest travel reviews and opinions from real travellers around the world" were misleading because it did not verify the reviews on its website and therefore could not prove the reviews were genuine.
The ASA agreed with the complaint and ruled that the advert must not appear again in its current form.
"We told TripAdvisor not to claim or imply that all the reviews that appeared on the website were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted," it said in its adjudication.
Chris Emmins, co-founder of Kwikchex, welcomed the decision. "We did this because we think that the greatest impact is very much on small businesses," he said. "They have only a few reviews; it is not as if there are loads of them on there. And particularly when it comes to unsubstantiated food poisoning and other elements like that, they are absolutely devastating."
But TripAdvisor was unhappy with the ASA's ruling and claimed it "flew in the face of common sense and is out of touch with the millions of real people who use and trust consumer review sites like ours every day."
Meanwhile, small hospitality businesses which have been on the receiving end of suspected false or malicious reviews on TripAdvisor welcomed the ASA's ruling but questioned the long-term effect it would have.
Mandy Davidson, director of the Cock and Bull, a Michelin pub guide-listed restaurant in Balmedie in Aberdeenshire, which last year threatened to sue the online reviews website over a suspected false review, said: "I welcome the ruling by the ASA and hope that it will send out a message to users of the site to maintain a degree of scepticism when basing their travel decisions on TripAdvisor reviews. Unfortunately, I don't think it will act as a deterrent to those who wish to manipulate the system for their own benefit."
Meanwhile, Mike Pemberton, owner of the Cafe at Brovey Lair in Thetford, Norfolk, who is still fighting a suspected malicious review of his business said: "While it is very good that TripAdvisor is not allowed to make those ridiculous claims, it doesn't help to get rid of the reviews of people like us that already exist and are still there."
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