Courts Made Right Call in TripAdvisor Suit

If I were Kenneth M. Seaton, I’d leave the past two years out of my memoir.

Seaton is the owner of the Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Make that, he was the owner of the Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. That hotel closed in November and was sold roughly a year or so after it was crowned as the dirtiest hotel in the United States by TripAdvisor.

Understandably, Seaton disagreed with TripAdvisor’s assessment of the property’s cleanliness. He sued the travel review site for $10 million claiming “unsubstantiated rumors” irreparably harmed his business. A U.S. District Court judge in August 2012 ruled against Seaton, and last week a federal appeals court upheld the original ruling, according to Reuters.

So not the best two years a person has ever had.

I do give Seaton credit: After the list became public, he released a statement saying the comments guests left on TripAdvisor were a “startling and unsettling issue” and the company was taking the matter seriously, according to cnn.com.

"The Grand Resort Hotel Group has already begun taking the steps necessary to restore this once great property, which has played host to tens of thousands of satisfied customers every year for its 30 years of existence," according to a statement released at the time.

Given that one of the comments claimed there was “chewing tobacco spit oozing down the halls and corridors” and “spiders actively making webs in every corner of (the) room,” Seaton showed a great deal of professionalism in his public response. Unfortunately, TripAdvisor doesn’t have a list for that.

Other hoteliers who appeared on the list weren’t as restrained in their responses. Behold the response from the Jack London Inn in Oakland, California, in which one commenter compared the hotel’s parking lot to “a post-apocalyptic junk yard.”

"Describing the hotel as 'the dirtiest hotel in America' is highly subjective and a gross exaggeration created from the reviews from some, anonymous disgruntled guests," according to the hotel’s response.

And from the Desert Inn Resort in Daytona Beach, which was No. 3 on TripAdvisor’s list that year: "TripAdvisor has remarks that can be placed by anyone. We believe over 70% of the reviews are falsified due to the fact their description of the hotel does not match the Desert Inn."

I understand the frustration of the latter two hotels, but I believe the overwhelming majority of reviews left on sites such as TripAdvisor are valid. Sources have told me that most people don’t go on TripAdvisor to leave negative reviews but rather positive ones. TripAdvisor also strongly defends the veracity of its reviews, saying it has systems in place to ferret out those that might not be trustworthy.

While I feel for Seaton, at the end of the day I agree with the courts’ ruling. I believe transparency is a good thing, and awarding a judgment to Seaton would have had a chilling effect on travel reviews.

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