Allegedly fake reviews make travel agency owners furious

Sivaneyan Kanakasundaram has been running the travel agency Siva Travel in Bern for 24 years. Many of his customers travel to his home country of Sri Lanka.

For a few weeks now, the Bern-based travel agency has suddenly been receiving miserable Google reviews, as «Blick.ch» writes. The most recent Google reviews are those with just one out of five stars, always without justification.

If you examine the other reviews from those who posted the ratings, you’ll notice they consistently—and often simultaneously—gave the Zurich travel agency Efly five stars, often without providing any justification.

Intervention at Google – so far without response

Kanakasundaram believes he knows the reason, as he explains to «Blick»: «Efly encourages its customers to post negative reviews about us.» According to him, a person he knows, who is an Efly customer, confirmed this: «Since he didn’t know how to write a review, he handed his mobile phone to an Efly employee, who then wrote the review for him.»

The travel agency Efly, which is suspected of being behind the poor reviews, is a competitor that appeals to a similar clientele to Siva Travel. However, the head of Efly denies the allegations.

Siva owner Kanakasundaram has already attempted to get Google to remove reviews that appear to be 'manipulated.' Despite a promised response time of four days, he has not received any reply from Google since submitting his request in mid-December.