This is a story, a fairy tale really, set in a magical landscape filled with castle’s, the remnants of Norman conquests, a sheriff or two, and a fellow who thinks he’s David taking on Goliath. The villain is a giant from the west, Massachusetts, to be precise.
Our story takes place in the tiny village of Uig, a sheltered bay with a village attached, created by the confluence of the rivers Rha and Conan in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides islands. Certainly, tiny Uig and its 363 residents would not expect that one of theirs might make news by attempting to take on a real life travel giant. But I’ll get to that in a moment.
Tourists, who can actually locate Uig, find a community filled with folks who make their living from fishing and crofting. There is a twice daily ferry, the Cal-Mac that connects the village to the western islands. Then there is a wee bit of tourism.
If you drive the Staffin road right by the small police house there is a path the locals know that will take you into a deep glen with a beautiful double waterfall. It is a rewarding journey but it takes more than a little effort.
Visitors also like to see the Uig Tower down the Portree Road. It is Norman style but it is actually a rather modern ruin built by one Captain Fraser, a local legend, not in the best sense of the word, who built it chiefly as a collection station for the outrageous fees he charged local crofters who framed the hilly terrains discarded by the wealthy landlords.
Given the pristine setting where the rivers come together, a beautifully situated six-bedroom B&B commands the best view. Richard Gollin and the small Inn’s chef, his wife Joanna, bought the Basile na Citte guesthouse and have been making a go of it since the late 1970’s.
Things were going well until something unexpected happened to the Gollin’s long-held dream. Business suddenly started to started to slack off last year when TripAdvisor reviewers wrote online that their rooms were freezing, there was no hot water, and that the small dining room was filled with “depressing” war memorabilia. Worse, one reviewer, just one, wrote that the “owner was patronizing and pompous.”
Sitting in his living room, along a beach fronted by breathtaking views, Richard Gollin, at age 64, got rather perturbed. He contacted TripAdvisor and told them that inaccurate and false reviews of his tiny inn was destroying his business. One “reviewer”, he pointed out, even wrote that guests were “under-fed”, a rather rare occurrence in Scotland and, some might say, a cultural impossibility.
Richard Gollin demanded that TripAdvisor remove the comments he felt were unjustified. But then he went a step further. He demanded compensation for his lost business. “I believe TripAdvisor is in dereliction of duty in failing to have proper supervision of what goes on their web site” he told the local press. And then he added, “All across the country people should stand up to TripAdvisor.”
This was quickly becoming a crusade and Gollin clearly felt that he, as a wee fellow with a six-bedroom Inn, needed to stand up to the biggest hotel bully on the block. Even if that “block” was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
He waited for a response from the Expedia Corporation, which owns TripAdvisor. But no one in Massachusetts seemed interested in responding to his compensation request.
Despite the serenity of his life in rural Scotland, and the calming views of water out his windows, Richard Gollin was really getting miffed by his perceived treatment by a major US-based corporation.
Finally, in a decision that surprised many in Uig, he decided to take on TripAdvisor in a court of law. So he filed an action in the local Stornoway Sheriff Court for 3,000 Pounds, the maximum permitted. In court filings he pointed out that the online reviewer who claimed he was “under-fed” was not even on the property on the date in question.
TripAdvisor was not going to go through with this charade. A multi-billion corporation based in Massachusetts can’t, after all, be expected to show up in local courts, particularly a “Sheriff’s Court”, to defend its position of transparency and a lack of editing. The company said it is not subject to the law in Scotland, and a local attorney from Stornoway, Angus Macdonald, was hired to appear to bring this point home.
The townspeople were curious about the trial and Richard Gollin’s attempt to take on a huge corporation in a jurisdictional dispute.
Gollin tried to prosecute the claim himself and then brought in a local advocate to assist. The battle raged on for several months in the small courtroom when, suddenly, TripAdvisor told presiding Sheriff Colin Scott Mackenzie that it was dropping its claim of immunity. In effect, for the very first time, and in an important legal precedent, TripAdvisor did concede that it was indeed subject to the laws of Scotland, a concession with international jurisprudence implications.
This should have been a victory for Mr. Gollin and all of those hotel owners, big and small, around the world who have been victimized by fake or erroneous online reviews. But, I am afraid, victory was short lived.
Sheriff Mackenzie ruled that the issues of contract law on an international scale were too complicated for his small court. He looked over at Mr. Gollin as he made the decision to move the case to a higher court, and told him “I do have sympathy for you.” But he approved Trip Advisor’s request to move the trial to a larger, more important court. The folks at TripAdvisor knew this would spell victory as Richard Gollin would now have to wage battle in a new setting requiring large outlays of money for attorneys, postponements, consultants, and transportation. The small B&B operator on Uig simply did not have the financial resources to wage this case in another venue.
In one statement to the court, Mr. Macdonald, TripAdvisor’s attorney, explained to the court that “People who use the site do so at their own risk.”
That is to say, I suppose, that they, we, are victims. And so too are the hoteliers who must abide by inaccurate, deliberately false, and malicious claims made by self-designated “critics” on the major review sites.
