Is there such a thing as an honest review site?

There is a lot going on around review sites these days. As a recent survey once again showed, online reviews and restaurant scores cause frustration for both restaurateurs and guests.

Restaurant owners fear fake reviews (read: reviews from guests who have never eaten at a particular restaurant, but write bad reviews about it); and guests do not always trust the scores, which a restaurant gets on certain sites. The question arises whether honest review sites exist. Here, we are happy to explain the principles Resengo uses to make resengo.com a fair review site.

Resengo does not gain any financial benefit from reviews

Reviews have a big impact on the number of reservations a restaurant receives. The question arises as to how a review site can be impartial when it earns from those reservations. Most restaurant review sites have a revenue model on reservations and/or on the discounts given. We don't believe you can remain objective then.

At Resengo, we do not have any revenue model on reservations, nor on promoting discounts. Our guests pay a fixed price per month for our solutions. This price depends only on the different modules a guest uses, never on the number of reservations. We therefore do not benefit in any way from ranking certain restaurants higher on resengo.com, nor from influencing reviews.

Restaurant reviews are there primarily to help restaurants

An honest review serves to give a restaurant feedback so that it can improve service, staff, food, etc. and understand the restaurant's pain points. Resengo therefore offers both public and internal feedback. Positive and honest reviews are great advertisements, but an honest review should mainly serve as an additional tool for the restaurant itself.

In fact, over the last six months, every restaurant working with Resengo received an average of 150 reviews via resengo.com. This way, all restaurants on resengo.com are working to further improve their service in order to get a higher score as well.

No unconnected or anonymous reviews are allowed

To avoid fake reviews, only guests who have actually eaten at a restaurant can write a review. This way, honest reviews are guaranteed. The review is always linked to the guest, their reservation or even the receipt. Reviews are therefore never anonymous and can only be given in response to a reservation.

The calculation of the Resengo score is transparant and evolving

Wondering how we score these honest reviews? The Resengo score is an average of the scores over the last 180 days. Very transparent, because every review in the past 6 months counts and every business manager can calculate this himself via his Resengo back office.

Resengo opts for a calculation period of six months because this is the only way a restaurant gets the chance to improve, and the consumer has a relevant and recent picture of the findings of other guests. That way, an honest review really is an honest review. Furthermore, a restaurant must have at least ten restaurant reviews before the score becomes visible.

The manager chooses which reviews are published, but the score cannot be influenced

Resengo allows operators to choose which restaurant reviews they want to post publicly. Naturally, mostly positive reviews are then seen on resengo.com. This is a conscious decision to let new guests make a positive choice. Consumers can decide for themselves, based on the score and the number of reviews on which the score is calculated (this is also always displayed with the score), how relevant those positive reviews effectively are. And from those positive reviews, guests can then figure out why they should choose that restaurant: is it the good atmosphere, the delicious food, the beautiful setting, the friendly service, ... or a combination.

The owner of a resengo.com page can also decide whether to work with reviews. Although he can choose which reviews are shown publicly, the owner can never delete a review. So the score is indeed the average of all restaurant reviews of the last 180 days, the good and the bad. Employees of resengo.com cannot remove reviews either. If a restaurant doesn't work with reviews, or doesn't have enough reviews yet, no score is shown.

The Resengo review score does not impact ranking

Users search on resengo.com mainly by distance. When filtering by distance, the search result shows the nearest restaurant first and does not take the Resengo score into account. Most people search by distance because they want to eat nearby. Filtering or sorting by score is not possible.

Even though online scores and restaurant reviews have gotten a bad reputation recently, at Resengo they are still perceived as something positive, both by guests and business owners. There are also very few cases of discussions around restaurant reviews, precisely because everything is transparent and never anonymous. The only question we sometimes get is from guests themselves who want to amend a negative review because, after talking to the owner, they have come to other insights after all. And that is precisely what we want to achieve: understanding and helpfulness on both sides.

– Dirk Gypen, CEO Resengo

Some significant figures

Today, over 4,100 restaurants are bookable online via resengo.com. Over 6,000,000 covers are booked every month through Resengo, with an average of 1,450,000 unique monthly users. Finally, exactly 641,833 reviews were given via Resengo in 2019.