An American faces 2 years in Thai prison for a negative review on TripAdvisor

Wesley Barnes, a 37-year-old teacher from the United States who lives in Thailand, can go to jail for two years for comments left online. Barnes did not like the service at one of the resorts, about which he wrote several critical reviews. The owners of the tourist hotel sued him for libel.

Wesley Barnes has published a critical review of the Thai Sea View Resort on TripAdvisor and several other resources. The hotel filed a lawsuit against Barnes, and if the court finds the claims justified, the man will be jailed for two years and fined $ 6,300.

Barnes was arrested on September 18 and spent a couple of days behind bars until he was released on bail. He claims that he did not write anything defamatory in his reviews, but the hotel administration is sure of the opposite.

Barnes stayed at this hotel on Koh Chang Island in June 2020. Something he didn't like there very much, because he began to publish unflattering reviews, accusing Sea View Resort of "modern slavery" and the poor attitude of employees towards guests.

The management of the hotel, for its part, stated that his reviews damaged the reputation of the hotel, as he posted them on several websites. And accused Barnes of not paying a fine for alcohol during his stay, which is why he quarreled with the hotel staff. And then he started messing with the Network.

And it was like this: Barnes and a friend were drinking gin on the beach near the hotel restaurant. Then they decided to eat at a restaurant, taking a bottle with them. The staff informed them that in this case they would have to pay a "traffic fee" of 500 baht ($15.80). This is a common practice, but Barnes and his friends felt offended by such a requirement.

However, the aftertaste seems to have remained, otherwise why publish critical reviews about the hotel?

A lawsuit against Barnes and one of his critical reviews on the Web

The review reads:

In one of the other reviews, Barnes claims that he saw the same manager shouting and showing excessive aggression towards a Thai employee, which gives him the right to accuse the hotel of "modern slavery".

The Sea View Resort said that the lawsuit was filed only because Barnes wrote not one, but several reviews on different sites over the past few weeks. The hotel stated:

He published reviews 1-2 weeks apart with obvious slanderous intentions. Despite numerous attempts to contact him to resolve this problem peacefully for more than a month, he decided to completely ignore us. He started responding to emails and messages only after he was notified by the authorities about our complaint."