Posting a bad review on TripAdvisor in Thailand can land you in jail
An American expat in Thailand is being sued for leaving a negative review of a hotel online. The hotel claimed it was especially accommodating to the guest and waived a corkage fee for a bottle of liquor he brought into the restaurant. The man used abusive language towards the staff, and then still left a negative review online.
The hotel asked him to delete the review, and when he refused, a police report was filed. This caused the arrest of Wesley B at the school he worked at for posting a 1-star review on Google Maps about a resort he visited in Koh Chang. He was escorted 250km away to face the complaint made against him by the resort owner. Since it was a Friday, he ended up spending the weekend in jail before he was able to post a 100,000 THB (US$ 3,200) bail.
This is what he wrote;- “The staff was not friendly. Nobody could smile. The restaurant manager was very rude and full of himself. He is from the Czech Republic. There are other hotels with better friendlier staff. Avoid this place as if it was the Coronavirus”.
This is what the hotel responded with;- “Dear Wesley B, We are sad to see that you have decided to post 2 negative reviews (the first one removed by TripAdvisor for violating their review guidelines), with the only purpose to defame our Food & Beverage Manager and the resort. We are certain however that everyone that reads and compares your review to that of all our other guests will see that your comments are far from the truth. We think it is very unfair for that you have chosen to try to give a very negative image of our wonderful resort and our very friendly staff so we would like to shed some light on what made you go this far.
On the day you arrived, you decided together with some friends to have dinner in our sunset restaurant and you brought along your own bottle of liquor which goes against our rules, as it does in any hotel or resort I have worked or visited around the globe. As a standard, for any guest to bring in their own bottled drinks there is a corkage fee of 500 THB which you were informed by a member of our staff. When she informed you about our house rules you dismissed her and used abusive language towards her. The Food & Beverage Manager decided to intervene for the safety and comfort of our staff and guests who were having a peaceful dinner.
It was then when another guest at your table took over the conversation with our Food & Beverage Manager and he apologized profusely and shook hands after a short chat. The F & B Manager then decided that, in order to avoid further disturbance, to allow you to have that liquor without charging you for the corkage fee.
It was to our surprise that even after all the disruption you caused and our gesture of allowing you to drink your own bottle of liquor at our restaurant you still decided to write negative reviews on all possible sites. We wish you a safe trip here in Thailand and we hope other resorts don’t have to go through the same experience as the one we had”.
Thailand has some of the strictest defamation laws in the world – in particular when it comes to online content. There are several countries with strict laws regulating online content. In this instance, one would surmise that the language criticizing the F & B manager personally, for example, as opposed to simply reviewing the service in general, could have been problematic.
Hospitality Sri Lanka
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