The long arm of the law has caught Meriton Suites and has fined it $3 million for filtering out negative guest reviews, leaving the favourable reviews of its serviced apartments.
While Meriton is known as a high rise apartment builder, it has 13 high rise serviced apartment buildings in Sydney, Sydney Surrounds, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The hotel business is proving to be very successful, with 4 more high rise buildings of what it calls Meriton Suites under construction.
By encouraging guests to post reviews on TripAdviser, the world's largest travel website, a hotel can increase its ranking, gain more prominence, and increase bookings. To encourage guest reviews, TripAdvisor provides a service where if a hotel supplies it with the email addresses of its guests and an email template, then it will email the guests and prompt them to write reviews. It is called Review Express.
Meriton Suites knows that to prosper in the highly competitive accommodation industry, it needs to encourage favourable reviews. So it adopted a company policy that the check out clerk would ask "Have you enjoyed your stay?" If the response was negative, they would add 'MSA" to the guest's email address before sending it to TripAdvisor, to ensure it would 'bounce'. And if there was a major service disruption, such as lifts not working, they would not send the email address to TripAdvisor at all.
The Federal Court has held that this is deceptive conduct, in breach of the Australian Consumer Law. Meriton was ordered to pay a $3 million fine, to not engage in manipulating guest reviews for 3 years and to adopt a strict Compliance Policy.
The lesson for Meriton is to say ‘sorry’ and do its best to deal with the complaint.