Critical Online Review Site Updates

Online review sites are the eyes and ears of the most important person in the restaurant world: the guest. In short, if you're doing everything right - your food is good, your service is top-notch, your house is clean and running smoothly - you'll get great reviews. If you're getting negative reviews, it's time to take a closer look at your restaurant.

In early 2016, news arrived at the Greater Birmingham Alabama Convention & Visitors Bureau that became a focal point of the organization's advertising effort for the coming year.

Zagat, one of the nation's first and foremost restaurant rating services, had named Birmingham the #1 Next Hot Food City.

It was huge news in town, says Dilcy Windham Hilley, vice president of marketing and communications for the CVB. We think Zagat is the big dog in the ratings world because we are most familiar with them as a media giant, Hilley says.

Later in 2016, Zagat named Birmingham as one of the 26 Hottest Food Cities in the Country. As a result, the Birmingham CVB used the Zagat rating in all of its regional and national advertising for the next two years, both digitally and in print, for the convention and leisure travel markets. So, in Birmingham, Alabama, at least, the venerable Zagat, the original procurer of user-generated content - even before we knew what that was - remains relevant and vibrant among foodies.

Online user review sites are more than just a soapbox for some and a wannabe restaurant critic space for others. Their larger purpose has been, in a very positive way, to serve as a digital suggestion box for restaurant management.

That's good news for those who seem to think that snarky comments posted hastily on Yelp and TripAdvisor have become the embodiment of restaurant reviews. "If Yelp or TripAdvisor bestowed a significant rating on us as Zagat did, we would probably do ads [with them] as well; but we like the audience that Zagat reaches because they often have more disposable income to spring for foodie weekends and other travel to Birmingham, says Hilley.