A hotelier read a guest's review on a travel portal, according to which his hotel had "the charm of the 60s and 70s" and that the "ham pizza was too expensive for its quality at 8.90 euros". As he was worried about the good reputation of his establishment, but in particular also had to fear loss of sales, he sued the review portal for deletion of the review. The portal refused, saying that it did not have to follow up every disagreement. In principle, this is correct; in this case, however, the hotelier also had the good idea to argue that the reviewer had never been a guest in the hotel.

In the last instance, the Federal Supreme Court ruled in favour of the hotelier (judgement of 9.8.2022, VI ZR 1244/20): If a clear violation of rights is alleged, the portal has a duty to check. In this case, the portal should have demanded proof from the reviewer that he had actually visited the hotel. This was lacking.

In our opinion, this is one of the rare cases in consumer redress where the interests of the entrepreneur and the consumer largely coincide. It is not the hotel operators who invest the most resources in fake reviews who should be awarded, but those who accommodate guests to their full satisfaction.