This is the second in a 2-part series of articles looking at the impact of the DMCCA on the travel sector.
On 6 April 2025, the consumer aspects of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (“DMCCA”) came into force, namely the Competition and Markets Authority’s (“CMA”) new direct enforcement powers and the updated unfair commercial practices regime, which replaces and updates the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
The DMCCA includes a new explicit ban on submitting, commissioning and publishing fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews (together “banned reviews”), whether incentivised by money, commission, discount, vouchers, loans, freebies, free stays or invites to events. Travel businesses are still free to incentivise reviews, but they must tell customers that the review has been incentivised, and the review must reflect the reviewer’s genuine experience.
Businesses are also required not to publish information derived from reviews (such as ratings, summaries, review counts or rankings) which is false or misleading, or displayed in a misleading way. They must take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove from publication banned reviews and false or misleading review information.
Publishing reviews in a misleading way includes: failing to publish, or removing from publication, negative consumer reviews whilst publishing positive ones; giving greater prominence to positive consumer reviews over negative ones; or omitting information that is relevant to the circumstances in which a consumer review has been written (including that a person has been commissioned to write the review).
Practical steps for travel companies
To provide further clarity on this new area, the CMA published guidance note CMA208, the “Fake Reviews Guidance”, on 4 April 2025. To avoid falling foul of the new rules, travel companies are advised to take the following practical steps going forwards:
- Genuine review gathering. Only encourage the submission of reviews that reflect a customer’s genuine experience of a travel service. In particular, travel companies should not interfere with the ability and willingness of reviewers to leave negative reviews such as by: arbitrarily stopping and starting review invitations; encouraging only those who are satisfied to leave reviews; persuading consumers to submit a complaint, rather than leave a review; dissuading consumers from leaving a review of their experience even if their initial problem has been resolved; treating a negative review intended for publication as a complaint and not publish it; or making an offer of dispute resolution contingent on a consumer not leaving a negative review.
- Refrain from cherry-picking positive reviews. Travel companies should take care not to select only favourable reviews to be presented or highlight certain positive reviews when these do not reflect the experience being reported by reviewers overall.
- Have a clear published policy that prohibits fake reviews and sets out an approach to incentivised reviews and review information. It should be clear to consumers how they can submit reviews and include rules on who can submit a review, the basis on which travel companies make decisions about publishing and removing reviews and how its ratings work.
- Detect banned reviews and prevent these from being published in the first place. Detection measures could include a combination of: requiring the reviewer to provide identifying information or only allowing users to submit a review if it is possible to verify they are a genuine customer; keeping records of the review submission history and allowing users to see a reviewer’s public review history; using automated software designed to spot patterns that may be indicative of fake reviews (for example, reviews written by different reviewers from the same IP address or spikes in highly positive or negative reviews); and having a notification system to report suspected banned reviews or false or misleading review information.
- Investigation. Where the travel company isn’t able to automatically determine that the content is unlawful, they should investigate banned reviews and false or misleading review information, considering in advance what sort of evidence may be required to establish the facts and how long they will give reviewers to provide information. The CMA has stated that it is important to ensure that there are no unreasonable delays before the publication of genuine reviews and genuine reviews (particularly genuine negative reviews) are not removed merely because a travel company objects to the reviewer’s assessment. If temporary measures are applied, such as withholding reviews or marking them as pending or suspicious, this should be communicated to consumers clearly.
- Take reasonable and proportionate steps to address the issues identified. This could include imposing sanctions where appropriate by banning user accounts or suspending or revoking reviewer privileges.
- Ratings and rankings. Address the impact of fake reviews, by updating star ratings and review counts where reviews have been identified and removed as fake.
- Conduct regular risk assessments of the prevention and removal process. Assess the risks that consumers may encounter banned reviews or false or misleading review information. This should not be a one-off exercise.
- Third-party review websites.If a travel company uses content from a third-party review website, such as Tripadvisor, it should carefully review the third party’s policies and arrangements for monitoring and tackling banned reviews. However, the travel company will ultimately be responsible for taking their own steps to prevent and remove banned reviews displayed on their own website.
Travel companies will need to balance the need for screening suspicious activity with the need not to prevent genuine, lawful and relevant reviews from being displayed. It’s important to note that the CMA has explained that removing a negative review that was genuinely created may mislead consumers as much as publishing a fake positive review.
In response to feedback that the new fake review provisions require changes to systems and compliance programmes, the CMA has provided businesses with a “grace period” until 6 July 2025 whereby it will focus on helping businesses comply with the new rules, rather than sanctioning non-compliance.
How we can help
Please contact the Travel Team at Fox Williams for more information on how we can help your travel business navigate the DMCCA.
