TripAdvisor dodging the issue
This week, Amnesty International released a report documenting how TripAdvisor is contributing to human rights violations against Palestinians by listing accommodation and attractions in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
When TripAdvisor responded two days later, its statement dodged all serious discussion of the findings of our report:
We understand that this issue is a sensitive matter with cultural and political implications. The listing of a property or business on TripAdvisor does not represent our endorsement of that establishment. We provide the listing as a platform for guests to share their genuine experiences with other travellers. As such, we do not remove listings of properties or businesses that remain active and open for business.
While the company is trying to claim it is a neutral actor, merely allowing the sharing of information among platform users, its listing of accommodation and attractions in Israeli settlements amounts to an implicit recognition of their legitimacy.
Yet Israeli settlements are almost universally recognized as illegal under international law (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”) The European Union for example has stated that:
“Settlement building anywhere in the occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law, constitutes an obstacle to peace and threatens to make a two-state solution impossible.”
In addition, the United Nations and many independent international organizations have documented, for years, how Israel’s policy of developing, expanding and guarding its settlements is inherently discriminatory and behind a wide range of human rights violations. By listing accommodation and attractions in settlements, TripAdvisor is helping to sustain an illegal situation and normalizing their existence to the public, as well as contributing to and profiting from human rights violations.
Our report looks at four digital tourism companies (as well as TripAdvisor, we look at Expedia, Booking.com and Airbnb). But we have decided to initially focus our campaigning on TripAdvisor, because it is a particularly influential company which plays a leading role in driving tourism to Israeli settlements. It is the second most visited information website (after Google) reviewed by foreign tourists arriving in Israel, with over a quarter (more than 800,000 people) in 2017 saying that they had consulted the site before arrival.
We found that TripAdvisor lists more than 70 different attractions, tours, restaurants, cafés, hotels and rental apartments in settlements in the OPT, including settlements in East Jerusalem. These listings are located in at least 27 different settlements in the West Bank. Five hotels have more than 50 rooms. They are scattered across the area and are in both large and small settlements. They include government-run nature parks, museums and archaeological sites, as well as privately owned Israeli tourism-related businesses.
TripAdvisor acts a booking service for a number of these, for which it charges a commission. These include four tours run by a settler organization in East Jerusalem, and five holiday rentals and a “desert safari” close to the Dead Sea. TripAdvisor also handles bookings (and therefore charges a commission) for a “2-hour shooting experience” at Calibre 3, a self-styled counter-terrorism training centre run by former members of the Israeli army. This costs US$170 per person. The centre is in the Gush Etzion settlement and invites tourists to “learn what it takes to be a counter-terror warrior”.
TripAdvisor Inc. also owns a further 23 online brands. Several of these, including www.holidaylettings.co.uk and www.viator.com, also allow users to make direct bookings for attractions or accommodation in settlements.
In its statement, TripAdvisor said that it would “monitor how other travel and Internet search companies list information about properties in the region.” Now would be the right time for it to follow the example set by its business rival Airbnb.
In November last year, the home sharing giant announced it would withdraw some 200 listings in settlements in the West Bank. While Airbnb has not yet implemented its decision, or extended this commitment to occupied east Jerusalem, its announcement shows what can and should be done by online tourism companies like TripAdvisor.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights state that companies have a responsibility to respect all internationally recognized human rights wherever in the world they operate. The responsibility to respect human rights requires companies to “avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities and address such impacts when they occur.” If a company identifies that it is causing or contributing to human rights abuses, and that it cannot prevent this, the only possible course of action is not to undertake the relevant activity. The UN Guiding Principles also make clear that companies have a responsibility to respect the rules of international humanitarian law. In the case of the OPT, these rules are set by the Fourth Geneva Convention, an instrument designed to protect the rights and interest of the people living under occupation.
If TripAdvisor had conducted even a basic risk assessment of its business activity in or with Israeli settlements, it would have learnt that its listings were unavoidably contributing to sustaining an illegal situation, as well as a regime that was inherently discriminatory and abusive of the human rights of Palestinians. It is astonishing that a multi-billion dollar company (which claims to be the world’s most visited travel site, with more than 450 million unique visitors a month) has either not done such due diligence on its operations in Israel and the OPT, or has done so but decided to continue its activities regardless.
