L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon calls for TripAdvisor ranking refresh

Peggy Li, marketing and communications manager of Michelin-starred L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon is calling on TripAdvisor to reassess its popularity ranking system, as she believes it does not fairly reflect the current reality of many restaurants.

In the age of customer feedback, understanding exactly what customers want is even more important. However, despite the reviews on sites such as TripAdvisor being useful in helping restaurants ensure high standards, the ranking system, in Peggy’s opinion, simply is not.

Restaurants including L’Atelier use TripAdvisor as key information for making improvements and restaurants undertake these improvements to ensure great diner experience and inevitably improve public perception through sites such as TripAdvisor.

Despite the improvements the ranking of restaurants could still be affected from earlier poor reviews. This means many restaurants, particularly independent ones, are stuck with a poor rating that does not reflect the reality of what diners are experiencing in the here and now.

It tends to be that when a restaurant is not doing as well, more people will write reviews about it and when it is doing well it seems that less reviews are left. So even if an improved restaurant receives 3 or 4 positive reviews a week, it will not outweigh the 10-12 negative ones that have been left in previous years.

Peggy feels it is about time TripAdvisor considered pressing the refresh button on their ranking system.

Peggy said: “Whilst of course customers should be able to give honest feedback about their experiences, after some time these must be deemed as not relevant any longer.

“Instead, if the ranking is based only on reviews from within a year, then browsers of TripAdvisor will be getting more accurate information and their experience of restaurants will bear relevance to what they have read and seen on TripAdvisor. It’s a win-win for restaurants and diners alike!”