In the world of internet travel planning, a huge step is reading online reviews. You want to know the experiences other people had at a hotel, restaurant, or attraction. It only makes sense. The problem is that those reviews might not be real. Some places hire people to write fake good reviews about themselves on sites like Tripadvisor. Alternatively, other businesses have been known to write equally fake bad reviews about competitors to push business their way.
The Italian government has decided to crack down on this issue. There is currently a proposal to create a law that requires sites like Tripadvisor to makes sure the person submitting the review has actually used the service they are reviewing. This means reviewers will need to provide ID, then prove they were there within two weeks of said review. The draft also includes the ability for Italian businesses and attractions to request reviews of questionable comments.
Ultimately, the goal is to make sure that reviews are accurate and being written by actual consumers. The current system can be gamed and manipulated, leading to bad information being provided to potential travelers. These reviews seem minor but are integral to the choices tourists make when planning trips. As such, ensuring they are accurate and not part of a marketing strategy is important to this process. They can influence everything from hotel choices to which country you pick.
Social media influencers are not immune to this. The new law would make it illegal to pay, bribe, or otherwise compensate someone for positive reviews, leaving a lot of influencers out of the loop in Italy. At the moment, Italy is the only European country making such a proposal. If it is successful, seeing it expand to other countries would not be surprising. That could prove to be an issue for influencers whose main form of income is exchanging their word for money and other perks.