Google and Tripadvisor reviews are designed as a useful tool for customers of restaurants, hotels and all kinds of establishments to share with other users how their experience has been, but the truth is that sometimes it can become a place of confrontation between disgruntled clientele and offended owners, especially when it comes to a false review.
This has been demonstrated by Juanjo Gondar, owner of Asador de Lapamán (Marín, Pontevedra). As La Voz de Galicia has revealed, the hotelier has received a false review from a blogger with more than half a million followers who never visited his restaurant in Marín, calling the owner himself “a real rude man.”
Gondar observed in the Google reviews a criticism of the Cenado con Pablo account, which on Instagram has just over 329,000 followers. In it, the critic rated the food, the service and the atmosphere of the place with a 1, in addition to insulting the owner. At first, Gondar thought it was a mistake, since he himself used to watch the videos that the youtuber made about restaurants.
The innkeeper decided to respond, thinking that it was a misunderstanding: “Dear Pablo, I just noticed this review and I doubt very much that you wanted to refer to our restaurant, since I have been a follower of your videos for a long time (in a personal capacity) and I don’t I know that you have been in our restaurant. I would appreciate it if you could contact me, but I repeat… I think it is a mistake. Thank you,” says Gondar.
As I thought, it was all a mistake: “He told me that I was wrong, that if I thought there was a restaurant with another name,” reveals the hotelier, who has shared an audio that the manager of Dining with Pablo to his Facebook account. “How can you trust this now? I studied suing him for the damage he could cause me. He is a reference man who appears on television programs talking about gastronomy and now you see this ”, laments Gondar.
Having dinner with Pablo, he regrets what happened, noting that he withdrew the comment as soon as he found out what had happened. The Association of Business Hoteliers of Pontevedra (Hoempo) highlights the danger of reviews, since on the platforms “it is not possible to control that the client has been there, but they can also comment on TripAdvisor”.
