The Ethicist - Tourist Retractions

I recently spent several days at a relatively expensive hotel. The place was deplorable and unsanitary, with an unresponsive front desk. I gave it a poor write-up on TripAdvisor.com, the travel website, titling my review “An Overpriced Dung Heap.” The following day, the owner contacted me through the site with an offer to refund almost half the cost of my stay if I would retract my review. I accepted the handsome offer and deleted my post. Who was the most unethical: me (for accepting the bribe), the owner (for offering it) or the site (which enables this chicanery and therefore has untrustworthy reviews)? HOWARD OLARSCH, FLORIDA

In this case, I’d classify the hotel owner as the least ethical actor. But you’re a close second.

TripAdvisor has clear guidelines regarding what business owners can and cannot do about bad reviews, most notably the following: “Owners may not ask reviewers to remove a review” using the TripAdvisor messaging system. Of course, this is not legally binding — and even if it were, there are many other ways an owner could contact a reviewer. Moreover, TripAdvisor has almost no editorial control over the veracity of the reviews it hosts, all of which are written by unvetted writers beholden to nobody. The site can’t necessarily be trusted, and anyone using it has a responsibility to realize that. So I would say TripAdvisor’s ethical breach is the least troubling.

Your decision to remove a review upon the acceptance of a bribe was lame (which you clearly understand). If you were a professional newspaper critic, such behavior would be grounds for termination. You, however, are just an annoyed guy who wrote a free review.

I can’t accurately gauge the depth of your ethical malfunction because I don’t know what your original goal was. If your motive for writing the review was to altruistically warn other travelers, it would seem your integrity has a pretty low price tag — but maybe your true motive was to mock the hotel. Maybe you simply wanted to vent your displeasure in public or to entertain the kind of weirdo who enjoys reading over-the-top TripAdvisor takedowns. Maybe you wrote it hoping you would get a refund. Regardless, you’re an unreliable narrator with no critical credibility.

But the hotel owner is unequivocally unethical. For one thing, he’s ignoring the rules established by TripAdvisor. Granted, he may never have agreed to those policies in the first place, but he’s choosing to involve himself with the site and interfering with a process in which the goal (at least in theory) is consumer transparency. He also did not offer reimbursement as a way to satisfy a customer, but only in exchange for the removal of an honest assessment of his hotel. If this is his normal business practice, it’s almost as if he’s involved with reverse marketing: He overcharges for a bad experience and only offers a rebate to those who inform strangers that this is how he operates.

In this column by The Ethicist a man shares his troubles regarding a hotel review. This man stayed an expensive hotel which was not hospitable at all and lacked many services, and thus he wrote a horrible review for it TripAdvisor. His dilemma arises from the fact that the hotel owner contacted him through TripAdvisor and offered to refund him for almost half the cost of the stay if he took the review down. This behavior is against TripAdvisor guidelines. The man accepted the bribe and then asked the Ethicist who was most unethical: himself, the hotel owner or the website. The first thing the Ethicist does is call the hotel owner the most unethical, the man the second and the website the third. First we must note that ethics are rules of conduct based on a social system, while morals are principals of right and wrong conduct for the individual. The first mistake the Ethicist makes is to disregard the fact that the man knew he was doing something wrong. If the man was doing something wrong, he wasn’t only being unethical he was also being immoral. He understood the implications of his actions and what he might be doing to future travellers who book the same hotel.  The Ethicist is using the questioner’s language as a way of knowing and interpreting the situation. By naming his review of the hotel “An Overpriced Dung Heap”, the man was sparking attention towards the hotel, attention that could’ve probably turned sour. He then questioned if he was being unethical. The Ethicist was using language already given to him to construct his opinion. If the man hadn’t used such negative words in his description of the hotel, would the Ethicist still find him the second “most unethical” or the first? If the complainer hadn’t used such language, the Ethicist might have found his reaction, and subsequent acceptance of the bribe, the most unethical and immoral. The Ethicist’s ultimatum will influence the man’s opinion of himself and he’ll chastise his actions even more than he is now. In Human Sciences, something like Language can have a monumental effect on the thought processes of a person. By calling someone unethical, their behavior might change forever. Now, the man may never again write an honest review for fear of falling into another unethical situation.

However, while we can judge who’s been the most unethical in this situation, we have several knowledge gaps. For example, why did the man use TripAdvisor as the website to post his review? Why did he accept the bribe even though he knew it was wrong? Was the hotel owner in need of money, and thus overcharged for terrible service? Does the hotel owner really want more people to get money back and not badly promote the hotel than actually run a better hotel? Why does TripAdvisor allow posts to be deleted but ask that hotel owners not use the website for bribes? Without all of this information, we have gaps in the story that might have changed the labels of unethical behavior and who was the worst at ethical behavior. We don’t know the hotel owner’s side of the story and thus we are pressured to believe that he had a nefarious reason to do so (we also form this opinion because of Language).  

         Both because of gaps in knowledge and the omission of immorality, I don't particularly agree with the Ethicist. Yes, I do believe the hotel owner was unethical, but I think the man was both unethical and immoral, and the website was neither. The hotel owner was unethical because he did what is socially considered wrong but not what went against his own principles. The man went against society’s policies and his own, therefore he’s the worst party of the situation as he’s doing wrong by himself and by others. However, the website was not at fault as it has guidelines for its users but cannot legally place them in a binding contract. It’s not the website’s fault the hotel is bad, the review was written, and the bribe was offered. By using the language the man wrote with, the Ethicist limited his judgment, thus wrongly interpreting the situation.