Well, I don’t exactly remember how I became a Local Guide. Being a foodie, I love to try out new places for their taste, ambience and product quality. Sometimes one visit isn’t enough to rate a place, so my final review usually will be after a couple of visits or until I feel that I have tried all their options to get a bird’s eye view of the hotel or restaurant.
Being from a family that was not so financially well-off, I was very late to enter the world of smartphones. Once I had my first smartphone, I had to explore what it did and how it was smart. Well turns out, if I went to a hotel or restaurant, that evening I used to get notification from Google Maps asking me to write a review. I wasn’t really fascinated about the idea that Google stores and tracks my location and decided to revoke the permission granted.
I had to travel a lot with regard to studies, work and family matters. Apart from these, my vacations were planned to discover new places and new tastes. Even though YouTube was a great help, actually finding the location was very tough and to my surprise, most shops were either closed or had been moved to a different place. Thus, I had to reinstate permissions with regards to location. Even then, writing reviews was way too outside the box for me.
Then one day, I was at one of my favourite burger places in my native place and the owner said please write a positive review as on of the customers had posted a negative review. That place being a genuine one and since the negative review was a completely foolish one, my friends and I decided to give the actual feedback.
Later that day, I got a notification saying that I got some points for sharing review and photos. This opened a new world to me. I took time to learn how it works and was convinced that this is something I could do. From that day onwards, writing review has been practice.