The Merits of Yelp

I'm sure everyone has a favorite way to find new places to eat when they travel. I'd love to hear your best methods in our Facebook group. It would be great to learn about new ways to find delicious food while traveling.

My favorite way to plan out my dining quests when I have upcoming travel is to use Yelp. I find the search feature works very well. For your search, in terms of you geographic center, you can be as broad as the city to which you are traveling or as specific as the address of the hotel in which you are staying. In my opinion, since Yelp started out with a foodie focus, it has continued to be at the top of the ladder for foodie reviews in comparison to Google or Tripadvisor or numerous other sites. (And I definitely use Tripadvisor for hotel reviews, because that is its bread and butter.) I also find that the reviews are thorough and appropriately critical. There is also not the issue (which I often see on Google) where people only review when something negative happens. Yelpers are happy to give honest reviews of restaurants of every caliber, so I have found some diamonds in the rough while traveling. For a short time, there were complaints of fake reviews on Yelp, but the issue seems to have been resolved, and I haven't seen any evidence of that problem in a long time.

What I use most on Yelp is the Collections feature. You can create and name lists for any purpose. I have done this based on cities, and within my metro area of Denver, CO, I've created sub-lists for areas like Littleton and Boulder. So when I am traveling to a city (or even just looking for something new in mine), I employ Yelp's excellent search tool that I mentioned above. Yelp powers this tool by populating quick questions for people when they "check in" on Yelp at a restaurant asking about useful descriptors so that other users can get better search results based on their responses. The result is that I can look for factors like "good for kids" or "romantic" or "quiet" along with " $$ lunch near Guinness Brewery" and get on point recommendations. Then I can sort these by rating, cost, or distance, among other options.

When I find restaurants that I like I can add them to a Collection called "Dublin" that I can refer to while traveling so that I don't have to use valuable vacation time searching for places to eat. When I arrive at a restaurant, I try to remember to check in on Yelp. This is where you answer those few short questions to help other users know more about the place you've checked in at and improve search results, and it also logs this location in your profile so you can't forget where you've eaten. Because I can't tell you how many times I've come back from vacation and told a co-worker that we ate at a fabulous little hole-in-the-wall, and I couldn't remember the name of the place to save my life. If you want to go the extra mile and really help out other users, then you can also write a review when you have a few minutes. It really doesn't take much time at all. I usually take a few photos too, but I enjoy photography, so if that's not your thing, feel free to skip it.

So whether you're new to Yelp or an old pro, I would encourage you to utilize this tool to explore new restaurants in your home town and in your travels for both you and your family. Capitalize on the Collections feature to organize your findings. Check out my Collections in cities across the US and Europe. You can even follow my specific Collections for cities you are interested in traveling to so that you can stay updated. You can also add me as a friend on Yelp. I'd be happy to connect with you!

Happy travels!