If you owned a spot in a tourist-heavy area, your rank on TripAdvisor wasn’t just a number, it was currency. Guests would literally walk in, phone in hand, quoting your position on the local ranking like it was gospel. Back then, we all played the game. We monitored our reviews, responded diligently, and hoped to climb just a little higher in the rankings. It wasn’t perfect, but it mattered.
Fast forward to today, and it’s a different story. TripAdvisor doesn’t hold the same weight in the restaurant world. It’s not completely irrelevant, but it’s not where most of us are focusing our attention any more. The reasons are tech shifts, changing customer habits, and some serious missteps on TripAdvisor’s part.
Google Changed The Game
These days, when someone searches for a place to eat, they don’t head to TripAdvisor, they Google it. And Google doesn’t just give you directions. It hands you reviews, photos, menus, opening hours. It lets you book a table or order online, all without ever leaving the search page. As restaurant owners, we see the difference. A few years ago, customers used to say, “I found you on TripAdvisor.” Now, it’s almost always Google. That shift has made TripAdvisor feel more like an afterthought than a must-have.
Trust Took a Hit
TripAdvisor’s credibility problem has been brewing for a while. Sure, it’s still possible to find thoughtful, honest reviews there, but it’s also been plagued by manipulation. Positive reviews can be bought or pushed. Negative ones can be weaponized. And while TripAdvisor claims to filter fake reviews, most of us in the business have seen questionable ones slip through. Google isn’t perfect either, but it has one thing going for it: accountability. Reviews are usually tied to real accounts, sometimes even with location data verifying the visit. That extra layer makes a difference.
Using TripAdvisor Feels… Tired
Managing a restaurant listing on TripAdvisor is clunky. The backend feels like it hasn’t changed in a decade. Messaging tools are clumsy, updates are slow, and the constant push to pay for “profile upgrades” gets old fast. From a guest’s point of view, it’s not much better. The site is ad-heavy, laggy, and awkward to navigate, especially when compared to the fast interfaces of Google, Instagram, or TikTok. In 2025, that matters.
Diners Have Moved On
Let’s face it: people don’t discover restaurants through text-heavy review sites anymore. They find them in a reel, a TikTok, a beautifully shot photo with a “must-try” caption. A single viral video can fill a dining room faster than a hundred glowing write-ups on TripAdvisor. And in different parts of the world, regional platforms have taken over. OpenRice, TheFork, even Facebook groups are where the local buzz lives now.
We’re Not Sad to See It Go
Here’s something many restaurant owners won’t say out loud: we’re relieved to see TripAdvisor lose its grip. For years, we felt held hostage by a platform that offered little recourse when someone left a false or malicious review. The appeal system was opaque at best, indifferent at worst. You could shout into the void and rarely get a reply. That kind of carelessly wielded power left a bad taste, and seeing that influence fade is a welcome change.
What We Focus on Now
These days, we keep our Google presence polished. We stay active on Instagram. We make sure menus are updated and that the guest experience feels authentic and engaging, online and offline. TripAdvisor is still there, but it’s turning into background noise. We glance at it now and then, but we don’t build our strategy around it. Unless TripAdvisor undergoes a serious reinvention, its future looks limited. To stay relevant, it would need to rebuild trust, modernize its tools, and actually respond to the needs of the businesses it relies on.
The Next Shift: AI & the End of Endless Reviews
There’s something else on the horizon, too: conversational AI. People can now ask tools like ChatGPT for restaurant suggestions tailored to their mood, location, and dietary needs, and get answers instantly. These AI tools pull from aggregated data, summarizing thousands of reviews without users needing to read a single one. The power is shifting from platforms that host reviews to tools that distill them.
For us as restaurant owners and managers, it means being consistent across platforms and making sure the overall online picture — photos, menus, hours, reviews — reflects what we really offer. Because in a world of AI summaries, one bad outlier can carry more weight than ever.
Image Credit: https://churrascophuket.com
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Churrasco Phuket Steakhouse serves affordable Wagyu and Black Angus steaks and burgers. We are open daily from 12noon to 11pm at Jungceylon Shopping Center in Patong / Phuket.
We are family-friendly and offer free parking and Wi-Fi for guests. See our menus, reserve your table, find our location, and check all guest reviews here:
https://ChurrascoPhuket.com/
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