Have you heard of Urbanspoon? How about Zomato?
Urbanspoon and Zomato for restaurants
Urbanspoon was once a popular social review app for restaurants that had over 80 million visits per month and 31 million downloads, in compared to Zomato with 35 million visits per month and 5 million downloads.
Urbanspoon is widely used by restaurant goers to see where to dine out next or to host the next dinner meeting at, available in over 500 cities worldwide. Urbanspoon has over 1 million restaurants registered, 1.4 million user reviews and over 43 million ratings for restaurants in the system.
Zomato on the other hand, has been widely popular in cities such as India, Brazil, and Chile, where the app is used in over 150 cities, with 300,000 restaurants as of 2015 registered, 400,000 reviewers and 4.8 million ratings generated. You’re probably thinking, how did the India-based start up manage to buy Urbanspoon?
Rumor has it, the acquisition cost a staggering $50 million.
Will Zomato reign supreme?
North American users became accustomed to Urbanspoon’s functionality, especially with the unique “shake to search” feature.
When the acquisition occurred, various media outlets drafted headlines such as “Zomato plans to eat Yelp’s lunch in America” and “India’s Zomato braces for war with Yelp.” This acquisition is one step closer to dominating social review for restaurant apps.
So what does this mean for restaurant owners?
As restaurant owners, it is important to be aware and be involved with these changes. There’s obvious pros and cons for being on either (or both) apps, depending on your restaurant needs and goals. This article dives deeper into how both Yelp and Zomato operate from monetization point of view.
This acquisition means that the many social review apps may soon be reduced to one. Forcing owners and managers to re-evaluate marketing plans, identifying ROIs, testing out which app can help their businesses succeed. How will these new changes impact your customers that are used to Urbanspoon?
Is your business optimized on Zomato? If not, we can help! Get in touch with our marketing experts for more details. We offer a FREE 1-hour consultation.