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With this measure, the Antitrust Authority has banned the spread and continuation of a commercial practice consisting of the “dissemination of misleading information on the sources of reviews”, published in the electronic database of the operators adopting instruments and control procedures inadequate to address the problem of false reviews. In particular, TripAdvisor advertises its business through commercial c laim that, in a particularly assertive, emphasize the authentic character and genuine reviews, thus inducing consumers to believe that the information is always reliable as an expression of real experiences do.
In the opinion of the Authority, the conduct at issue violate Articles 20, 21 and 22 of the Consumer Code, “making it likely to mislead a wide audience of consumers as to the nature and main characteristics of the product and alter their economic behavior. ” The intervention Authority aims to prevent consumers assume their economic choices, with regard to services rendered by tourist facilities sought on the site, including on an advertising information untrue. Within 90 days, the two companies will have to communicate the steps taken to comply with the prohibition of further spread and continuation of unfair trade practices. The penalty must be paid within 30 days from the notification date.
Here’s the official response from TripAdvisor: “We are reviewing the Ruling Authority, but a preliminary examination of the decision we think is reasonable, we strongly disagree with its content and we will appeal. We firmly believe that TripAdvisor represents a positive force, both for consumers and for the hospitality industry. We fight fraud with force and we are very confident in our systems and processes. From an initial examination we believe that the conclusions Authority are not justified and not in line with commercial reality and not just the companies that deal with “user generated content” but to any company in any sector.
The zero tolerance policy Authority means that we would condemn if only review a million had been considered not accurate. It was adopted a standard that is unrealistic for any business model. You should come to the same conclusions against a bank that uses the word “safe” or “protected” because one customer of 200 million suffered a fraud at tempt on his credit card. Or against a society of internet security that uses similar terms because the 0.0000005% of its customers has got a virus on his computer.
No organization, business or person in the world is more incentive TripAdvisor to ensure that the content on the site is accurate. Basically, if people did not find helpful reviews do not continue to go on our site. The main interest of TripAdvisor is keep the site free of fraud: in fact, are more than 300 million people each month are on TripAdvisor because they consider it a valid and useful travel website. And is 98% of Italian users to have declared that the TripAdvisor reviews are accurate compared to the experience that he had then *.
Our systems and processes are extremely effective in protecting consumers from the small minority of people who try to cheat our system. We have teams and sophisticated systems to identify those responsible for fraud and we put in place strong penalties to deter th em. The reviews go through our monitoring system that will map the how, what, where and when. We use sophisticated automated tools and algorithms to detect patterns of activity, using the best practices in various sectors, such as credit cards and financial institutions, with a team of over 250 specialists in content, working 24 hours on 24, seven days of 7 to maintain quality of the reviews.
Millions of people use every day on our website to find help in making the best decisions and be sure to get the best possible value from their hard earned money. Without a platform as our millions of consumers would be in a worse condition.
The Authority’s mission to protect consumers so the underlying principles of our two organizations should be aligned. However we can not fail to note that in this case the Antitrust continued the proceedings under the impulse of an association of entrepreneurs and consumers, that instead the Antitrust Authority has the power to pro tect, and that is not present in the documentation in acts almost no complaints from consumers.
We want to reassure our community that the business Index remains unchanged: the invaluable travel resource that millions of people use every week will continue to operate as usual, as we will continue our 100% commitment to the systems effective and aggressive that we use to detect fraud. “
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