(TAN): Sea View Resort on Thailand’s Koh Chang island, which recently made news for suing an American tourist apparently over negative reviews on Tripadvisor, has clarified that it had taken the legal step as a last resort.
“We did not file a complaint based only on one review but on four reviews and the intention of such, written about a week or so apart,” Top Storup, the resort’s rooms division manager told TAN. “This was a premeditated attack on us that seemed to continue week after week and we did not know when his attacks would end.”
Storup claimed that they were forced to involve the authorities when the accused, an American tourist named Wesley Barnes, “ignored all our efforts to contact him”. “We do not have any authority to request the arrest of any citizen. His arrest was a decision made by a judge and not us,” the resort added.
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Barnes could face up to two years in prison if found guilty, reports said.
Barnes had visited the Sea View Resort on the Koh Chang island, famed for its sandy beaches and turquoise waters. He wrote negative online reviews about the destination. According to the Tripadvisor review Barnes had posted in July, he encountered “unfriendly staff” who “act like they don’t want anyone here”.
“The Sea View Resort owner filed a complaint that the defendant had posted unfair reviews on his hotel on the Tripadvisor website,” Colonel Thanapon Taemsara of Koh Chang police told AFP. He added that Barnes was accused of causing “damage to the reputation of the hotel,” and quarrelling with staff over not paying a corkage fee for alcohol brought to the hotel.
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Barnes, who works in Thailand, was arrested by immigration police and returned to Koh Chang where he was briefly detained and then freed on bail.
Thailand’s anti-defamation laws have long drawn scrutiny from human rights and press freedom groups, who say that powerful players use it as a weapon to stifle free expression. The maximum sentence is two years in prison, along with a fine of THB 200,000 (USD 6,300).
