account General terms and conditions of use B&B HOTELS Belgium – Customer Reviews
Terms of use updated on 21 September 2023
B&B HOTELS thanks all customers who, through their reviews, contribute to the constant improvement of the welcome and the services offered in hotels in the B&B HOTELS network.
Please carefully read these terms of use (the “terms of use”) for the customer review service.
B&B HOTELS Belgium, a société à responsabilité limitée (limited liability company), registered in the Belgian trade register (BCE) under the number 0693.764.388, having its registered offices at Place Marcel Broodthaers, 8, Régus Brussels South Station - 4th floor, 1060 Saint-Gilles (Brussels), Belgium, telephone No.: +32 (0)4 71 67 67 17 E-mail address: bel-info@hotelbb.com (hereinafter “B&B HOTELS” or “we” or “us”) provides its customers (the “customer”, the “User(s)”), or “you”) to give a review following their stay via a customer satisfaction questionnaire. The customer will receive a link at the e-mail address that he or she communicated at the time of his or her reservation, directing him or her to the customer satisfaction questionnaire generated by its specialised service provider.
These terms of use define the legal framework governing customer reviews and their use. Access to customer reviews and their use are subject to acceptance of these terms of use.
We may amend these terms of use at any time by publishing a new version of the terms of use for the customer review service on the B&B HOTELS website (hereinafter the “B&B HOTELS Website”). You are invited to consult the terms of use regularly in order to examine the changes made. If you do not agree with the amendments, please cease using the customer review service.
B&B HOTELS reserves the right to amend, suspend or terminate the customer review service at any time and for any reason whatsoever.
By accessing or using this service, you accept to be bound by and to submit to these terms of use and their amendments in force at the time of your connection. If you do not agree with these terms of use, please do not use this service.
The customer review service is offered to customers of B&B HOTELS hotels located in Belgium. These terms of use specify the responsibilities of user customers, in accordance with laws in force, to allow for the suitable and optimal use of the customer review service.
1. Presentation of the customer review service
B&B HOTELS offers its customers the possibility of giving reviews and dialoguing with hotels in Belgium in which they have stayed. The customer review service includes the possibility, following a stay, of giving a review on a hotel to which the hotelkeeper has the possibility to respond. This service does not include the provision of internet access, the provision of a mailbox or the hosting of web pages.
Except in case of an unforeseeable technical incident, the customer review service is accessible 24 hours a day.
2. Use of the customer review service
2.1 Obligations of the User
B&B HOTELS lays down principles and rules for the gathering, moderation and restitution of reviews that Users must comply with for their reviews to be accepted and published.
By confirming the review drafted by the User, the latter certifies that this review reflects his or her experience and genuine point of view with respect to the hotel concerned by the review, that he or she is not personally or professionally tied to the hotel and has received no financial or other compensation for having written this review.
The User’s review means the expression of his or her opinion on his or her consumer experience, using any quantitative or qualitative basis for his or her assessment.
By using the customer review service, the User acknowledges that he or she:
• has legal capacity to be bound by these terms of use; and
• is over 18 years of age or has reached the age of majority in the country in which he or she is a resident or citizen.
All customers having reserved and then stayed in one of the B&B HOTELS hotels located in Belgium have the possibility of giving a review and obtaining comments in return from the hotelkeeper.
The User acknowledges being fully informed that the review that he or she files must correspond to his or her personal experience during the stay and may be published on the B&B HOTELS Website as well as on any other electronic medium for communication belonging to or operated for and on behalf of B&B HOTELS, such that the review must be free of any rights of broadcast and reuse, and the fact of giving a review shall cause the non-exclusive, gratuitous, transferrable and worldwide assignment in favour of B&B HOTELS or its agents of all rights of reproduction, display, adaptation, translation and broadcast for the entire duration of protection of the intellectual property rights in question, if any.
On publication of Users’ reviews and the responses by hotelkeepers on the B&B HOTELS Website, the identity of the customer shall remain anonymous. Only the forename and the initial of the family name will be attached, in the following format (for example): “Martin D”.
2.2 Gathering of reviews by B&B HOTELS
The filing of a review by a customer shall not give rise to any financial or other consideration from B&B HOTELS in return for the filing of that review.
To file a customer review, the User will receive an invitation to give a review, several hours after his or her departure from the hotel, by e-mail to his or her personal e-mail address that he or she communicated at the time of his or her reservation, containing a link to a customer satisfaction questionnaire.
In order to present recent and relevant reviews, the link inviting the customer to file his or her review can only be used for a limited period of 30 days. After this time, the customer can no longer give a review via the customer review service.
2.3 Moderating of reviews
Customer reviews are subject to automated moderating tools. B&B HOTELS reserves the right not to publish or to exclude, finally and without prior notice, any review that infringes the rules of these terms of use. This possibility does not exclude the right of B&B HOTELS to suspend or remove access to the customer review service as provided for in the Section “suspension/termination of access to the customer review service” below.
As moderation does not make it possible to detect all unlawful content and, in particular, content that infringes the rights of third parties, Users shall protect B&B HOTELS and hold it harmless against any action or claim arising due to the publication of a review which is in fact unlawful.
This customer review service must not be used as or considered to be social media or a dating site. In this sense, any exchange or attempted exchange of contact details shall be deemed contrary to the rules of use as set forth below and forming an integral part of these terms of use.
In the context of the process of normalisation of our customers’ reviews (ex post facto moderation or additional investigations) B&B HOTELS reserves the right to contact the customer or User in order to verify that the review is genuine.
B&B HOTELS makes a link available to Users on the digital platform to report a review. The “report review” link may be found on the review in question or by using our website’s contact form (point 5).
2.4 Rules of use
Each User is legally responsible for his or her use of his or her access to the customer review service. Any access made with a User’s name and e-mail address, from an invitation sent to him or her after his or her stay, shall be deemed to be made by the User concerned by the stay, as a B&B HOTELS customer and under his or her sole responsibility. As for the use of access to the customer review service, the User undertakes not to usurp, use, transmit or collect any personal data and in particular any data that is prohibited, illegal, unlawful or contrary to good morals or public order and that infringes or might infringe the rights of third parties, including intellectual property rights.
More generally, the User undertakes to comply with regulations in force concerning the following, without limitation:
• people’s right to privacy,
• intellectual and industrial property rights,
• the protection of personal data,
• compliance with public policy rules concerning the content of online information, the confidentiality of correspondence and the prohibition of intercepting electronic communications sent via the internet.
As the customer review service is exclusively intended for the publication of reviews from Users concerning their stays in a B&B HOTELS hotel, the User also undertakes, in the context of its use, to:
• make only a strictly personal use of his or her access to the customer review service and not disclose it to any third party, for any purpose whatsoever (for personal or commercial purposes or to generate unsolicited e-mail i.e. spam),
• not to disseminate words, images or URLs linking to websites proposing content that may be unlawful, offensive, denigrating, defamatory, racist, xenophobic, inciting pornography, paedophilia, suicide, discrimination, hatred due to origin or belonging or not belonging to a particular ethnic group, a nation, a race or a religion, the commission of crimes, acts of terrorism, or apologia for war crimes or crimes against humanity,
• not to commit criminal offences or hacking that infringes the rights of others and the safety or persons and, inter alia, not harass, stalk or threaten anyone,
• not to transmit or use malevolent software (Trojan horse, spyware, virus, etc.) or other program that is harmful or destructive to the customer review service or the data of other Users,
• not to use the customer review service for advertising purposes, in particular in favour of an advertiser, service provider, goods manufacturer, a competitor and/or a brand,
• not to communicate e-mails addresses or telephone numbers, or create hypertext links to other websites or service platforms,
• not to use the customer review service fraudulently, abusively or excessively, including by deliberately or unintentionally causing the congestion of the service by indiscriminate direct mail advertising (spamming, bulk e-mail, junk e-mail or mail bombing) or the dissemination of teasing or trolling messages that generate an excessive number of answers and are thus able to disturb the availability of the customer review service,
• not to proceed with the reproduction, display, making available or communication of works or objects protected by authors’ rights or related rights without the authorisation of the holders of these rights,
• not to proceed with the reproduction, making available or resale, in any form whatsoever, of all or part of the content of the customer review service. The use of such processes shall be deemed an act of infringement of the intellectual property rights of B&B HOTELS.
With the aim of guaranteeing the authenticity of the reviews available on the customer review service, the User also undertakes not to proceed intentionally with operations that could have the consequence of:
• masking his or her real identity,
• connecting or attempting to connect to the customer review service without being authorised to do so,
• collecting the data of another natural or legal person,
• usurping the identity of another natural or legal person,
• appropriating the access of another User,
• altering, modifying or accessing data or information belonging to other Users of the customer review service
• perturbing, restricting, slowing, disorganising, preventing or interrupting the normal operation of the customer review service,
• modifying or destroying all or part of the information available on the customer review service.
B&B HOTELS reserves the right to delete any review which does not comply with these commitments.
2.5 Grounds for rejection of a review
B&B HOTELS reserves the right to reject the review transmitted by a User via the customer review service in the following cases:
• if the content of the review is unlawful in nature;
• if the review manager considers that it might incur civil or criminal liability;
• if the “text” content contains insults or profanity;
• if the elements pertaining to the identity of the author contains insults or profanity;
• if the text content contains random characters or meaningless phrases;
• if the content is unrelated to the reviewed subject;
• if the attributes of the review contain concrete elements of conflicts of interest;
• if the text content is badly written to the point of being unintelligible;
• if a user makes an inappropriate comment about other content or its author;
• if the text content that is intended to be published contains personal information, such as the forename or surname of individuals that are not public persons, a telephone number, a precise physical address or e-mail address;
• if the text content contains a credit card number, social security number, bank account number or any other information that might lead to identity theft;
• if the text content states that the User did not actually have the consumer experience;
• if the text content includes a call to bring a lawsuit;
• if the content mentions websites, hypertext links, URLs, e-mail addresses or telephone numbers, including those of the customer;
• if the text content is clearly spam;
• if the descriptive elements for the consumer experience are not provided;
• if the review’s main comment does not contain any heading or text content.
If review is rejected, B&B HOTELS will inform the author of the review of the reasons for its rejection, by any means.
2.6 Publication and restitution of the review
The review concerning a hotel will be displayed on its dedicated page on the B&B HOTELS Website and mobile applications within a maximum period of 72 hours after the review is filed.
Reviews shall be kept on the B&B HOTELS Website and mobile applications for a period of 24 months following their publication. Comments are displayed by default from the most recent to the least recent.
An overall score is posted for each review. It corresponds to the score entered in the question concerning the stay overall (Global Score).
The overall score for the hotel (Global Score) takes up all of the scores given by customers who completed the customer satisfaction questionnaire, and includes the scores of reviews given without a heading or without any text content in the main comment section. It is calculated using a special algorithm to assess a hotel. The most recent customer reviews are given a higher weighting. The calculation is based on the data over the last 24 months from all sources taken together. This displayed global score is the actual score. It is displayed as a series of circles:
Examples:
• a score of 3 or 3.1 or 3.2/5 will be displayed as 3/5
• a score of 3.3 or 3.4 or 3.5/5 will be displayed as 3.5/5
• a score of 3.6 or 3.7/5 will be displayed as 3.5/5
• a score of 3.8 or 3.9 or 4/5 will be displayed as 4/5
2.7 Reporting abuse in reviews and removal from publication
A User or a customer may report abuse in a review published on the B&B HOTELS Website if he or she considers it to be abusive.
Customers or Users have the possibility to request the modification/deletion of their review or a third party’s review by reporting it via a link provided for this purpose on each review.
Moderation will be applied once again to all changes to or replacements of reviews.
On the request of a hotelkeeper, a review may be removed from publication if it does not comply with these terms of use. In any event, the author of the review will be informed.
3. Commitment and responsibility of B&B HOTELS
B&B HOTELS recalls that the Internet is not a secure network. Under these conditions, it is for the User to take all appropriate measures to protect his or her own data and/or software, in particular from contamination by any viruses that circulate on the internet or from intrusion by third parties into his or her computer hardware for any purposes whatsoever, and to make the usual backups with his or her own equipment.
B&B HOTELS applies the resources available to it to provide access to the customer review service but cannot guarantee bandwidth or throughput, which will inter alia depend on the number of connected Users.
B&B HOTELS is not responsible for content accessible over the internet and the damage that may arise from its use.
B&B HOTELS cannot be held liable for the exploitation of data or information that the User puts onto the internet using the customer review service.
B&B HOTELS disclaims all liability as to the consequences of fraudulent, abusive or excessive use of the customer review service, such as its deliberate or unintentional congestion or the sending of indiscriminate direct mail advertising or e-mail to the User using information gathered by third parties from the customer review service.
By making the customer review service available to Users, B&B HOTELS acts solely as a hosting service. In this respect, and in accordance with Article XII.19 of the Code of Economic Law, B&B HOTELS cannot be held liable for information stored on the request of Users if B&B HOTELS was not effectively aware of its unlawful nature or if, as of the time where B&B HOTELS became so aware, B&B HOTELS acted promptly to remove such information or to make it impossible to have access to it.
The reporting of abuse shall be processed as follows:
1. The abuse report shall send the review for moderation (but does not necessarily guarantee that it will be removed from publication at the end of the moderation process)
2. The review or response is studied by our moderating departments and may be the subject of further examination
3. The person filing the report may be contacted in this framework during the period in which moderation is carried out. During this period, the review or the response will continue to appear in publication
4. The review or response will be removed from publication if it is contrary to these terms of use or any applicable laws and regulations.
B&B HOTELS shall bear no liability towards the User of the customer review service in the event of:
• improper installation and/or improper configuration and/or malfunction of the User’s hardware,
• improper use of the customer review service,
• impossibility of access to the customer review service,
• perturbations, interruptions and/or unavailability, in whole or in part, of the customer review service,
• force majeure within the meaning of case-law for article 5.226 of the Civil Code.
To the full extent permissible by law, B&B HOTELS cannot be held liable for compensating any intangible loss and/or property damage, whether direct and/or indirect, suffered by the User and/or third parties due to use of the customer review service.
4. Responsibility of the User
The User shall be solely responsible for any intangible loss or property damage, whether direct or indirect, that he or she causes to any person due to use of the customer review service.
5. Suspension/termination of access to the customer review service
B&B HOTELS reserves the right to suspend or terminate access to the customer review service at any time, including in the event of breach by the User of one of his or her obligations, the rules of use and in particular in the event of hacking, unlawful use, or the dissemination of messages that are contrary to public order or good morals having the User’s account as their origin or cause, without any claim being possible seeking the liability of B&B HOTELS and without the User being able to claim any compensation or indemnity.
In addition, B&B HOTELS, on the request of third parties or any competent authorities, reserves the right to suspend or terminate access to the customer review service without incurring any liability and without the User being able to claim any compensation or indemnity.
6. Cookies
The User is informed that on using the customer review service, information on browsing by his or her terminal (computer, tablet computer, smartphone, etc.), may be recorded in “cookies” installed on his or her terminal, subject to the choices that he or she has made concerning cookies via the configuration of his or her browser software. For more details on the manner in which we use Cookies, please consult our Cookies Management Policy, available at: https://www.hotel-bb.com/en/cookies-policy.
7. Privacy
When you access the customer review service and when you use it, we will collect and process, to the extent permissible by law, the personal data that you provide to us (your name, your date of birth, your e-mail address, your reservation details, etc.) or which are generated as a consequence of your access to the customer review service and its use. For more details concerning the manner in which we collect and process your personal data, please consult our Privacy Policy, available at: https://www.hotel-bb.com/fr/politique-de-confidentialite.
8. Jurisdiction and Governing Law
THESE GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS TOGETHER WITH THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CUSTOMER AND B&B HOTELS ARE SUBJECT TO BELGIAN LAW FOR HOTELS LOCATED IN BELGIUM, SUBJECT HOWEVER TO ANY IMPERATIVE PROTECTIVE RULE OF LAW.
Prior to any proceedings before an arbitration tribunal or court of law, the customer is invited to contact the B&B HOTELS customer service, and where relevant to bring facultative mediation proceedings. The customer service of B&B HOTELS may be contacted using the claim form provided for this purpose.
Without this infringing the applicable procedural rules, and in accordance with Article XVI.4 of the Code of Economic Law, B&B HOTELS shall communicate to the consumer the contact details of the Consumer Mediation Service.
After having brought the matter before the customer service of B&B HOTELS to attempt to resolve the dispute by agreement, and in the absence of a satisfactory response or in the absence of any response within a period of sixty (60) days as of the claim, the customer may bring the matter before the Consumer Mediation Service (Service de médiation pour le Consommateur), which has the following contact details:
- Postal address: North Gate II
Boulevard du Roi Albert II 8 Bte 1
1000 Brussels
- E-mail: contact@mediationconsommateur.be
- Tel: 02,702 52 20
- Fax: 02,808 71 29
- Information: https://mediationconsommateur.be
Every consumer also has the possibility of using the European online dispute resolution platform, accessible at the following address: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/main/index.cfm?event=main.home2.show.
As mediation is not compulsory, the customer or B&B HOTELS may withdraw from the process at any time.
IN THE EVENT THAT MEDIATION FAILS OR IS NOT CONSIDERED, THE DISPUTE GIVING RISE TO SUCH MEDIATION SHALL BE BROUGHT BEFORE THE COMPETENT COURTS.
9. Sanction
A User who infringes the rules defined above may be denied access to the customer review service and may have proceedings brought against him or her as provided for by laws and regulations in force.
10. Entry into force
These terms of use of the customer review service shall apply and shall be deemed to have been accepted by the User as of the validation of the review by the User.