While I sympathize with hotels and restaurants that are being unfairly maligned online, I’m also convinced these lawsuits are a terrible idea. Even if the hoteliers win their effort—the laws in the United Kingdom might be more favorable to their claims of libel—they won’t improve their reputations or their bottom lines. That’s because the hotels—and other businesses that have taken to suing sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp—fundamentally misunderstand how people use review sites. When we scan reviews online, we aren’t looking for gothchas—outlandish, one-off tales of awful experiences. Instead, we look for patterns. We make judgments based on the themes that emerge from many reviews, not from the crazy charges that appear in one or two. As such, there’s an obvious way for businesses to improve their online standings. Rather than trying to suppress a few negative reviews, they ought to work like mad to offer the kind of service that inspires a whole bunch of positive reviews.
