TripAdvisor reviews go over 500 million

TRIPADVISOR HAS RELEASED STATISTICS that show that Aqua Shard in London is the UK’s most reviewed restaurant, while Park Plaza Westminster Bridge is the most reviewed hotel.

The news came as the customer driven review platform announced that it now has more than 500 million reviews and opinions on its website, and receives 290 pieces of user-generated content every minute of every day.

Aqua Shard, which sits within the 95- storey Shard building in Southwark, has received more than 11,000 reviews and sits 737th out of 17,953 restaurants in the capital.

Meanwhile Park Plaza Westminster Bridge has received more than 15,000 reviews and is 192nd out of 1,087 hotels in London.

The most reviewed hotel in Spain would appear to be the Hotel Becquer in Sevilla with 3,866 posts. Locally the lovely Hotel Molino de Santo in Benaojan has 1,119.

The most reviewed UK tourist attraction is the London Eye, which has more than 57,000 reviews.

Worldwide, the most reviewed hotel is the Luxor Las Vegas, with 29,000 reviews.

The most reviewed restaurant in the world is Pasteis de Belem in Lisbon, with 26,000 reviews, and the most reviewed tourist attraction is the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, with more than 107,000 traveller reviews.

Stephen Kaufer, chief executive officer and cofounder of TripAdvisor, said: “Many savvy businesses report seeing incremental increases in the ratings and rankings on TripAdvisor when they engage with travellers by responding to reviews and using the feedback to improve their customers’ experience.”

Nonetheless, not all hospitality businesses are happy with the way in which reviews are handled on the site, with some complaining of difficulties having reviews they see as malicious or inaccurate being taken down by the website.

I have said before I am not convinced about the service and have never understood their use of ‘algorithms.’

I have personally taken their ‘content integrity department’ to task over simple readings with questions like, “If restaurant A has 150 reviews of which 140 are excellent and have been posted within a two-month period and restaurant B has less reviews with more good than excellent over the same period of time how come B is higher in the rankings?”

The reply was more like a Chicken or The Egg conundrum!!

(Content information courtesy of TripAdvisor and The Caterer and Hotelkeeper)

ONE OF THE REASONS that I opened Restaurant Nueva Campana, in Nueva Andalucia, Marbella some years ago was because of the highly successful restaurant next door, Il Ristorante.

Based on the old adage of ‘never open a newsagent where there isn’t a newsagent’!

A couple of years ago they moved away to bigger – and better premises – in Golf Valley. It took them a while to find their pattern but they are back to their old selves again and a visit with some of my favourite clients/friends last Friday proved very enjoyable.

While Location, Location is very important if you don’t serve quality and value for money it’s all for nowt!!

Menu del Día’s abound on our Costas ranging from €7.50 to €30. Pitch it at €15 with extras available then you have a good chance of capturing the local market.

Thanks to Renée and Sabine and staff at Conrad’s and especially to my friends, for a splendid lunchtime.

If you have a favourite lunchtime venue, dear reader, wherever you live please let me know, I would like to get a list of Value for Money Eateries in your area.

IN MY WINE CORNER this week, I dusted off a bottle of Corral Gran Reserva 1987.

From Rioja Alta and made with 80 per cent Tempranillo, 15 per cent Garnacha and 5 per cent Mazuelo, I was pleasantly surprised that it was in very good condition for a 30-year-old wine.

Having said that, while it was still pretty good on the nose it would be fair to say it had lost a little of its finesse.

Having left a glass in the bottle overnight (I know!!!) it hadn’t kept up the next day despite being vacuumed. It certainly wouldn’t last much longer in my opinion.

So if you’ve got any, I suggest you start drinking it!!

WE CONSTANLY HEAR ABOUT the number of British pubs that close in the UK every year.

Now the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has pledged to help halt the decline in the number of pubs in London, as new figures show the city has lost 1,220 pubs since 2001. That’s around 80 a year.

There have been many studies about why this has been happening but I’m not sure that anyone has studied the ‘fashion’ element.

Are there more trendy wine bars/pubs meaning the younger crowd are moving away from the traditional pub? Have communities changed?

Are country pubs losing their appeal?Is it the fact that some of the established pubs don’t serve food? Or maybe the food they serve is poor. Or of course there simply could be too many pubs for the amount of people.

London’s population is 10 million. Let’s assume that three million of those are children – that leaves, say, seven million adults.

Now, obviously, not all these adults go out to drink, but if they did, with 3,615 pubs in the whole of the city that would mean less than 2,000 customers for each pub.

I’m not going to carry on with figures, but you see what I mean? As the article on this page re TripAdvisor tells you there are nearly 18,000 restaurants in London – five times more than there are pubs!

And getting a seat in a restaurant in London is a lot harder than finding standing room in a pub. Must tell us something don’t you think?

I remember in the early 80’s the trend in the cities was to turn banks into modern pubs.

Can we think of something else to reduce the population of bankers?