Previously known as the breakthrough company for holiday reviews, TripAdvisor has come under attack for false reviews quite a bit recently, and been sued quite a bit too. Now the British advertising watchdog, the Advertising Standards Authority, has launched a formal investigation into the hugely popular travel review website because the company is probably in breach of the advertising code.

Basically, TripAdvisor will be forced to offer evidence to prove that its reviews are real and fair, or the claims on its website will be deemed to be misleading and have to be removed, thus further damaging an already shaky reputation.

Within its power, the ASA cannot investigate the veracity of the reviews themselves, and this might be the reason why nothing other than numerous lawsuits have happened so far.

Of course, this is how TripAdvisor built its reputation to begin with:

You’ll find real hotel reviews you can trust at TripAdvisor.

Millions of travellers like you have shared their honest reviews of hotels, B&Bs, inns, and more.

That was all good and well a few years ago when people did actually post honest reviews of where they’d been and stayed.

Now all you seem to hear about is how the hotel next door has been posting negative reviews about its neighbour because nobody actually regulates the comments.

This has even put some establishments out of business.

The formal investigation has been sparked after the ASA received a complaint from a company called KwikChex.com.

The Bournemouth-based KwikChex.com helps companies manage their online reputations, and has been inundated with some 3 000 claims that are seemingly misleading, fake and defamatory in respect to reviews posted about hotels and restaurants.

The company has spent the last year or so monitoring reviews that are being posted on the network of websites and it’s estimated that there are over 27 000 legally defamatory comments.

In its complaint to the ASA, Kwikchex.com claimed that TripAdvisor doesn’t verify any of the 50 million reviews on its network of websites and therefore, they are misleading and cannot be deemed as honest.

TripAdvisor currently operates 18 websites covering 27 countries.

This should be interesting.

[Source: Guardian]