Businesses, business owners, hoteliers, restaurateurs, search
marketers, social media marketers, authors, bloggers and so on who create any online review where they pretend to be a consumer of the product or service could face criminal prosecution when a new EU law starts to be enforced later this year.
Increasingly, search engines and other aggregators of “user-generated content” are starting to rely on reviews as an indicator of quality and relevance. Amazon have been using this concept for years and most travelers will check sites such asTripAdvisor.com before making any hotel reservation.
Recent research by The Sunday Times found that a large percentage of positive reviews on travel sites were submitted by the actual hotel or restaurant owner – posing as guests or patrons. The EU believes that
this type of behaviour is essentially misleading consumers and in recognition of the increasing role that user reviews play in marketing a business, it needed to provide some level of protection to the consumer.
When it is fully implemented in the UK later this year, it seems that the Office of Fair Trading will not be the only one able to bring an offence to court. The new directive will empower competitors to sue a rival business that is using this sort of tactic under the heading of an “unfair commercial practice”.
We’ve always found review sites – such as TripAdvisor.com – to be essential in marketing a hospitality or local business. In fact, ensuring that our clients are listed in various sites that provide the option for reviews is an important component of our Local SEO service – but we encourage our clients to print a small note card with the web address of the targeted review site and hand this to customers when they pay their bill. A typical message might look like this:
If you enjoyed your stay with us, please spread the word. Simply go online to www.TripAdvisor.com (a hotel review website) and leave us a positive review. If you leave your name and the date of your stay, you will beeligible for a discount the next time you stay with us.
It seems that this law is getting only a small amount exposure in the press – but the implications could be significant. Although it will not be enforced until later this year, I encourage all businesses and social/search marketers to stop the practice of creating fake reviews now so that they don’t run into potential trouble later.
