Hotel sues guest over bad TripAdvisor review; Yelp users terrified

In a complete wait-you-can-do-that? moment, Hotel Quebec is suing one-time guest Laurent Azoulay for $95,000 after Azoulay posted an unfavorable review on popular travel review site TripAdvisor.com. After waking up at 3a to the gentle nibbling of bed bugs, Azoulay contacted staff to report what happened. The hotel was fully booked, and the best they could do was ask Azoulay's family to pack up and (annoyingly) transfer to another hotel. At three in the morning.

The next day, Hotel Quebec apologized and offered the Azoulays an arbitrary $40, probably for a mint Pirates of the Caribbean box set... or some topical creams... both of which have little to no soothing affect on bed bug chomps. Now, with $40 worth of Keira Knightley pirate goodness in hand and a leg full of bites, Azoulay jumped onto TripAdvisor.com to air his frustrations in a scathing 1-star review:

Tripadvisor screenshot
TripAdvisor

Hotel Quebec admits to finding bed bugs, but are insistent that this was a one-time occurrence and limited to Azouley's room. After numerous attempts to come to a resolution with Azouley about the incident (namely, for him to take his review down), the hotel’s General Manager, Jacques Robitaille, filed a lawsuit against him for $95,000.

So who's in the right here? Ostensibly, no one. Azouley had bed bugs in his room, which the hotel doesn't deny -- but when the property tried to amend the situation with the offer of a new room and 40 bones, Azouley still decided to share his negative experience with the world (according to TripAdvisor, over 1,700 people have found his review helpful). There's no way this won't hurt Hotel Quebec in some way, especially now that the disagreement's come to a litigious stand-still.

Lessons to be learned:

• People are really into TripAdvisor
• If you're a large hotel chain, give people more than $40 to hush up a bed bug bonanza
• Proper grammar doesn't really matter when it comes to being taken seriously on travel review sites
• Jacques Robitaille will straight up sue you, son
Dead Man's Chest is still the best pirate flick