To me Local Guides program is a simple and user-friendly, easily accessible through general google account, yet highly informative and valuable tool for both consumers and businesses.
As a client or a consumer, I am now able to distinguish a suitable, worthy place from the one not compatible to my personality to the one perfectly matching my mood, interest, and by all means price range. This can be easily done via scanning through the main keywords that the local guides leave in their comments.
From the business perspective, me as a potential business owner can see what people specifically dislike about a certain type of place in order not to have this repeated should I own my own similar business. By the same principal the positive remarks would encourage the entrepreneur to even further improve on the clients’ beloved areas.
As a Local Guides’ constant dedicated user, I also feel responsible and worthy pointing out to other place owners which pros and/or cons their place has. Being a very concise and constructive observer, the main goal is to enhance the places globally in the long run by contributing via my personal feedback.
I get even more excited when I receive a personal comment to by feedback from the place owner. Mostly these arise from hotel and restaurant managers who emphasize on the importance and value of my rating as well as the suggestion to the improvement that I leave in order to make new clients feel more comfortable by looking differently at things which have not been previously noticed. This indeed truly injects the purpose of my whole participation into the project.
The more users contribute to Local Guides, the more objective the rating becomes. Brick by brick this tool may soon become the influencer of the decision making for business/place owners. It may be price shaping as well.
