Google, an American tech giant, used a ranking based on its own criteria to rate hotels on Google Search and Maps, instead of the classic star rating.
The representatives of the hotel trades say they are "satisfied" with this amount paid.
The giant Google will pay a fine of one million euros in France for having constituted a "misleading classification" of hotels in France, substituting a classification established according to its own criteria for that, official, ranging from one to five stars, announced Monday the Suppression of fraud.
Launched in 2019, an investigation by the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumption and the Repression of Fraud (DGCCRF) "demonstrated the misleading nature of the ranking of hotels by Google, in particular on its search engine", according to a press release.
As a result, "the companies Google Ireland and Google France have corrected their practices and, after the agreement of the public prosecutor of Paris, agreed to pay a fine of 1.1 million euros as part of a criminal transaction" .
A problem on the stars
On the side of the main union of the hotel and catering industry, Umih, Laurent Duc, president of the hotel branch, said he was "very satisfied" to AFP.
"It was crucial for us to protect the stars of classified accommodation: this classification made by Atout France has a value, it corresponds to more than 250 points to be respected: size of the room, presence of a bathroom, number of taken ... We rose up against this in 2008, "he said.
But Google "did not want to hear anything and continued to use stars based on consumer comments, which deceived the public because in France stars are reserved for hotels, tourist residences and classified campsites. They would put small flowers or small ones. pointed hats, there would be no problem, ”continued Laurent Duc.
"Confusion"
The rating, previously assigned to establishments based on information from various third-party sources publicly available online, now reflects only the official French ranking of hotels on Google Search and Maps, Google France told AFP, with an application since September 2019. The DGCCRF, after having received "complaints from hoteliers denouncing the display on Google of a misleading classification of tourist accommodation", thus checked in 2019 and 2020 "the nature and fairness of the information provided by the platform".
The rankings of more than 7,500 establishments had been compared, "on a substantial number of cases", to the "only official classification existing in France and issued by Atout France", ranging from one to five stars.
It thus appeared that Google "had substituted for the Atout France classification a classification established according to its own criteria", which "was greatly confused by its presentation and by the identical use of the term 'stars', according to the same scale ranging from a to five, to classify tourist accommodation ".