Italian law investigates travel review websites

Travel review websites like TripAdvisor, Booking.com and Expedia have come into the attention of Italian law after complaints coming from both consumers and hotel and restaurant owners.

Possible fraudulent ratings are being looked into. The main concern is that the websites are not vigilent enough against owners who post praising reviews regarding their establishments or, the opposite, rivals who give bad ratings to their competitors.

Some restaurants have even complained about clients demanding for free or upgraded products in exchange for not posting a bad review about the establishment.

Another concern surrounds the unclear distinction between independent user-generated reviews and the business profiles that hotels and restaurants pay for to get published on the website.

The US-based company, TripAdvisor, defended itself stating that it has a well-established checking system, comprised of both computer programs and human content checkers who work on detecting abusive actions and detect patterns of activity.