As a Local Guide, I’m pretty sure most of us got started by posting the odd restaurant review, couple of pictures of tasty looking dishes on a night out with friends; I got started that way too!
But it wasn’t until last year that I realised posting on Maps might actually mean something more…
In the past, when people were travelling or visiting a new place, they mainly relied on recommendations from friends, family, and/or travel magazines. Nowadays of course, this has been replaced by the use of rating and review sites. Potential customers check pictures, ratings, comments of previous visitors and make an informed decision whether to go or not.
Since Maps comes pre-installed in majority of smartphones on the market and has become an indispensable app for millions of us daily, I think it is my responsibility as a Local Guide to provide objective and unbiased opinions on places visited, add missing information, and provide high quality pictures for people to know what it’s like. Big businesses that attract loads of customers, reviewers, and bloggers get their fair representation online. Also, those businesses usually have a solid marketing team working behind the scenes to make sure the place gets plenty of exposure on various outlets; including Maps.
So then, what about small local independent businesses which’s owners haven’t included their place on Maps either because they don’t have the expertise to do so or simple nobody told them they could? I believe this is where I can offer my input and give something to the community. The amount of times I’ve visited the top recommended places with relatively positive feedback from previous customers and left with a kind of feeling that some authenticity was missing… On the other hand, there have been times when I’ve randomly come across the smallest, most obscure coffee shop or bakery in the world and enjoyed it to the max! Obviously, for local folk that’s not an issue as they know what’s on in their communities and word of mouth is still prominent.
However, as travelling has become immensely more affordable compared to what it used to be and more and more people are opting for the casual city break, I believe it would be beneficial for all parties to represent small local authentic businesses to the world!
Some of my Maps contributions:
