TripAdvisor
hotels and resorts appear when consumers search. Some hotels pay TripAdvisor when travelers click on their links; some pay commissions when tourists book or travel.
The $1.5 billion online travel website’s initial public response has been swift, rolling out a warning system that marks resorts where safety concerns have been reported in the news media. The company promised to make other changes aimed at making it easier for travelers to share their troubling experiences.
Two days after the Journal Sentinel investigation was published, TripAdvisor co-founder and chief executive Steve Kaufer said the company’s policy changed in recent years.
“Over time TripAdvisor has updated this policy to allow more descriptive reviews on the site about first-hand accounts of serious incidents like rape or assault,” Kaufer posted on LinkedIn.
Assault allegations
Kaufer’s statement contradicts the experience a travel writer from Russia had after she tried to post a review describing how she was raped this year at knifepoint by a housekeeper at the Six Senses Zil Pasyon in Seychelles, an island off the east coast of Africa.
In June and again in July, she tried to caution other travelers using TripAdvisor. Despite the criminal charges of sexual assault filed against the man, her attempts at posting her experience on TripAdvisor failed.
“I was looking for TripAdvisor people in Russia to give them my documentation,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published because her son and parents don’t know what happened. “There was nobody to connect with and ask why they didn’t publish it. I write letters to general mail. I got nothing back.”
The Journal Sentinel confirmed her report through legal documents and with interviews. The man’s trial is scheduled for next month.
A spokesman for Bangkok-based Six Senses said in an email that the resort is cooperating with the investigation.
TripAdvisor did not initially publish the woman’s review because she didn’t respond to a verification email, then tried to post from a different email address, the company’s spokesman said.
It did publish the woman’s review the day the Journal Sentinel published its investigation.
Among the changes TripAdvisor promised is to provide users with more specific information when their reviews and forum posts are rejected.
The company vowed to better train moderators to be more consistent in how they apply the guidelines.
As for the new program that flags hotels and establishments where health, safety and discrimination issues have been publicized in the media, the company has issued four — all resorts in Mexico where travelers reported sexual assaults, blackouts and deaths to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. An internal committee decides which places will get the “badges” — information the company tentatively plans to keep posted for three months, according to TripAdvisor spokesman Brian Hoyt. It’s unclear exactly how the decisions are made.
Hoyt said the company will focus on places where there have been credible media reports of problems and where owners, employees or contractors are responsible, rather than guests.
For example, the case of Erin Andrews, a TV sportscaster and co-host of
Dancing With the Stars, who was secretly videotaped by a stalker while she was naked in a hotel room wouldn’t qualify, he said.
Andrews sued the owners and managing company of the Nashville Marriott, saying they could have prevented the incident. They should have told her that a man requested the hotel room next to hers, the lawsuit argued. Last year, a jury awarded her $55 million and found the hotel to be partially to blame.
Hoyt said reviews are meant to be firsthand accounts of travelers’ stays at the various properties. Those rules have been in place for years, he said. The families can post their comments in the forum section but not as a review tied to a specific hotel.
Hoyt said the company is striving to improve its policies.
Moderation problems
Vivek Krishnamurthy, an instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, said most user review type sites have issues with how they are moderated. From inadequate staffing to training and culture, problems persist.
A federal law passed in 1996 called the Communications Decency Act provided a broad shield of immunity to online companies that republish content from elsewhere. TripAdvisor is protected under Section 230 of the act when reviewers say negative things about hotels and establishments, according to Krishnamurthy.
He said the “badge” system is a good way of hedging against some of the risk of being held liable for injuries to travelers or to the hotels and restaurants that get bashed by bad reviews.
“Once you start playing with the content, it becomes trickier,” said Krishnamurthy of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. “The more you go down the road of becoming an e-commerce site with reviews, the protections start to look shakier.
“There are lots of unanswered questions here,” he said. “We’re just at the beginning of seeing these kinds of suits emerge.”