Have you ever worried about your customers’ experiences while visiting your premises, and that they might go online and do a bad review? Well, you can now add another thing to worry about in your list of worries.
TripAdvisor, the US-based travel, hotels and restaurant companies review site will start placing warning badges on the businesses pages where there have been reported safety issues. Some of these issues include incidences of assault and rape.
This move comes after TripAdvisor got a public condemnation after removing a review by one Iberosar Paraiso made back in 2010 about having been raped by a security guard at a Mexican resort. The company reacted by first giving a public apology and restored the review by Paraiso. TripAdvisor said her review was removed by the company’s older policy of condoning only “family-friendly language” on their site.
Then again, by removing her review, it raised the question on just how TripAdvisor moderates negative comments on businesses it is making money from. Does the company face a dilemma when it carries negative reviews about a company, while on the other side that review is important as it is about safety issues?
No doubt, downplaying the issue will remove the focus on sexual assault and other safety concerns. Thereby not encouraging businesses to be pro-active in fighting against such matters. You only need to look at what damage the culture of silence does by looking at the showbiz industry where producer Harvey Weinstein has been a stealthy sexual predator. He managed to get by for so long because his victims and ‘near-victims’ were quite.
In a statement to TechCrunch, TripAdvisor said, going forward it will display badges on the businesses’ pages “anytime we believe there is a current health, safety, or discrimination issue relevant to travelers as reported on by either our traveler, community or by news media.
As always, we encourage consumers to do additional research outside of TripAdvisor. We remain as committed as ever to providing travelers everywhere with useful and accurate information and absolutely agree that TripAdvisor should be a platform for other travelers to be made aware of incidents like this.”