Victory or defeat? Federalberghi he has no doubts: the sentence of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court which canceled the 500 euro fine imposed by the Antitrust on the very famous hotel and restaurant research and review site Tripadvisor, "officially sanctioned its unreliability".
According to the president of Federalberghi Giuseppe Roscioli, in fact, “because TripAdvisor explicitly on the site it highlights that it is unable to verify the facts (and therefore the truthfulness or otherwise) of the reviews, the Lazio TAR has certified the impossibility of considering the platform a source of certain news and information, but simply a site of opinions often in freedom where it is possible to come across the most enormous hoaxes. It is very important that consumers understand this and are warned about it”, concludes Federalberghi.
Tripadvisor's reply was not long in coming: “It is important – the company argued – that what is established by the Lazio Regional Administrative Court's sentence is not artfully distorted by those who have seen their statements denied by the court. In fact, in the sentence, the court of Lazio underlined that TripAdvisor is equipped with 'an in-depth control system focused on adulteration organized for economic purposes and demonstrated in court that it operates manual and automatic controls that detect the anomaly'. TripAdvisor uses sophisticated algorithms and automated systems to detect business patterns, backed by a team of 300 content specialists who work 24/7 to maintain review quality. Every single review goes through this advanced monitoring system, however with 139 contributions received every minute it is common sense to understand that it is not possible to actually control every detail on the site; for example, we cannot know immediately when a structure in the world is closed and we rely on our community or the owner himself to receive information of this type, following which we immediately update the site”.
“The TAR of Lazio – Tripadvisor also said – overturned the sentence of the Antitrust Authority specifying that no negative impact on consumers has been detected, millions of whom continue to use the site every day because they find information useful and reliable. These are the facts that emerged from the sentence that should not be subject to instrumental interpretations".
