France fines Google over misleading hotel ratings

After two-year anti-fraud investigation, Google admits using its own hotel rating system rather than France’s official one.

France says it was “crucial” to protect the country’s hotel rating system, which requires 250 requirements. Picture: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP

France has fined Google $AU1.71 million for misleading people about French hotels by rating them with stars that differed from the country’s official system.

The French subsidiary of the internet giant agreed in a negotiation with prosecutors to pay the fine after acknowledging that it had used its own criteria to award the stars, which appeared identical to the state-run system that classifies 7500 establishments with one to five stars.

In 30 per cent of the Google rankings hotels appeared in different positions from the official list in searches and on its map and hotel reservation apps, the state anti-fraud agency, DGCCRF, said. This caused “great confusion”, it added. “This practice was particularly damaging for customers who were deceived about the level of services they could expect when they were reserving lodgings. Hoteliers also suffered when they were wrongly listed with a lower star rating than they officially held.”

Google said it had halted the practice, which had been subject to a two-year anti-fraud investigation; it now uses the official star system.

Laurent Duc of UMIH, the national hospitality industry group, welcomed Google’s change of practice. “It was crucial for us to protect the star ranking system … it corresponds to 250 criteria that have to be met,” he said. “We have been fighting this since 2008.” Google, he said, “didn’t want to listen and carried on using stars based on the comments of customers, which fooled the public because in France stars are reserved for officially ranked hotels”.

Google has fallen foul of the French authorities before. In December last year it was fined $AU155 million by the national data privacy agency for placing advertising trackers, or cookies, via its search engine in users’ devices without their consent.

In December 2019 the state competition authority fined Google $AU233 million for anti-competitive behaviour and for having unclear advertising on the Google Ads page.

France had more than 85 million foreign visitors a year before the pandemic — more tourists than any other nation. The country overhauled its hotel rating system in 2012, requiring compliance with a rigorous list of facilities and services. Beyond five stars is the palace category, which is for properties that are “outstanding in every way”. There are 31 hotels on that list, 12 of them in Paris.

The Times