The owner of an Italian marketing agency that wrote fake reviews for hotels and restaurants has been jailed for nine months and ordered to pay costs of more than £8,000.

The agency, PromoSalento, tried to submit more than 1,000 fake positive reviews, illegal in Italy before they were caught and the owner jailed in what is the first conviction of its kind, though hopefully with more to follow.

TripAdvisor has sadly not been transparent enough to release the names of the hotels and restaurants which were happy to pay to mislead their public, yet. According to website Fakespot, which aims to weed out bogus reviews, up to one third of TripAdvisor reviews are fake, a claim contested by TripAdvisor.