The management of a Cebu City-based hotel filed a libel complaint against a former guest who wrote of her “horrible” experience at the place in a travel website.
Erica Pelaez faces a libel complaint filed by Dr. Evan Mendoza, president and board member of the Center Suites Inc. for her blog post and her review citing her “horrible” experience at the hotel at tripadvisor.com
Mendoza said the backlash from the post and review posted on Feb. 17 damaged the hotel’s reputation.
Pelaez said the hotel put itself up for criticism when they signed up for tripadvisor.com.
She also said that her posts constitute public interest. Pelaez and her friends stayed at the hotel during the Sinulog season last January.
She was on her way to the airport for her flight to Manila when hotel staff asked her about a missing key from one of the rooms they rented.
Pelaez allegedly refused to pay for it because she didn’t stay in the room. She called up her friends who stayed in the room and they told her that they left the key on the table.
When the key was not found, the hotel staff allegedly barred her from leaving. Pelaez then threw a fit but the security guard barred her way, causing her to head to the lobby and slam the glass door shut, shattering the plate glass.
Pelaez called her parents, who spoke with the hotel staff and the Mendozas and agreed to pay for the damaged door.
Pelaez had to sign a promissory note for the door and accompany the hotel’s officer-in-charge, Joy Dato-on and barangay tanods to the nearby barangay hall to issue a statement on the incident.
Last Jan. 24, Dato-on showed Mendoza a printout of a tweet that Pelaez had posted about her “horrible” experience in the hotel.
In her tweet, Pelaez said the hotel staff “cared more about money, their hotel, that KEY, instead of their guests.”/ADMU Intern Shaneika Edryce T. Lim
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