New York hotel tried to charge $500 fines for negative online reviews

22 Aug 2014 • engadget.com

Big brands and colossal companies spend small fortunes to protect their online reputations, so what’s a small boutique hotel to do when it’s worried about bad reviews? Well, for an object lesson in what not to do, consider the case of Hudson, New York’s Union Street Guest House. By now, the broad strokes have been well established: The company had a ridiculous policy featured on its website, under which bad reviews were punishable with $500 fines. Here’s the offending bit, before the hotel excised it from the web:

If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event. If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500 fine for each negative review.

Yikes. Shameless. Don’t stay here.