In an effort to encourage budget-conscious consumers to dine out despite the recession, TripAdvisor, an online community providing unbiased hotel reviews, photos and travel advice for hotels and vacations, today introduced an enhanced restaurant review application. Providing reviews, maps, filters and links to reservations, the new restaurant product gives travelers an easy way to find, locate and reserve excellent dining options.

 

TripAdvisor features more than two million reviews and ratings on nearly 500,000 restaurants, and is providing travelers with a new innovative tool to help them plan their next getaway.

 

A recent TripAdvisor study found that 71 percent of more than 1,000 U.S. respondents claim they use the Internet to search for dining options, read reviews and make reservations.

 

This enhanced restaurant functionality is part of a series of new features that tripadvisor.com plans to unveil in the coming weeks to help people find the best product for the best price.

 

"Whether your vacation is thousands of miles away or just around the corner, TripAdvisor has everything you need to find a great meal," said Christine Petersen, chief marketing officer of TripAdvisor. "In 2009, we're committed to offering our customers, both travelers and advertising clients, the best ways to find value. Stay tuned for more."

 

According to TripAdvisor, more than five million travelers have already accessed restaurant information on TripAdvisor since the beginning of 2009.

 

Whether searching for a kid-friendly restaurant, meals for under $10, or a way to satisfy a craving for Mexican food, TripAdvisor's new restaurant filters help travelers find the perfect dining option that meets all their needs. An added benefit is the restaurant reviews feature which lets travelers see what places their friends are recommending.

 

In addition the site’s filters sort results based on:

 

-- Price - Search restaurants by four different price levels ranging from $10 and less per person to $40 and above.

-- Cuisine - From Mexican to vegetarian, and everything in between, sort by type of cuisine.

-- Recommended for - For specific interests, such as looking for a great breakfast or an eatery with outdoor seating, take advantage of the "recommended for" filter.

 

A recent TripAdvisor dining out survey found that 75 percent of food lovers tend to dine at eateries with meals costing $25 or less per person. When it comes to restaurant cuisine, 31 percent said their favorite type of food is Italian, 18 percent said American, while14 percent like Mexican the most.

 

Another added feature is that with just a few clicks, travelers can make a reservation in the U.S. by directly linking to www.OpenTable.com, a provider of free, real-time online restaurant reservations for diners, or to toptable.co.uk, an online reservation site in the U.K. By the end of this February, travelers will be able to book reservations for more than 10,000 restaurants in the U.S. and Europe on TripAdvisor.

 

TripAdvisor is also leveraging the power of social networking with its Local Picks restaurant reviews and ratings application on Facebook (News - Alert). Introduced in 2007, this application easily enables the sharing of dining options among friends. After launching the Facebook app, TripAdvisor grew its restaurant offering from less than 100,000 establishments to nearly 500,000 in approximately 15 months.

 

So after deciding what type of food you want and how much you want to spend, now you must find how to get to the restaurant. TripAdvisor makes locating a restaurant easy for travelers by offering dynamic maps that show where restaurants are located and links to get directions.

 

For those who can’t leave behind their iPhone (News - Alert) while on vacation, travelers can download the TripAdvisor Local Picks restaurant finder app throughiTunes. Using the iPhone's location-based capabilities, the Local Picks application helps travelers find the best restaurants, as rated by locals, based on their current location. For budget travelers, the application allows restaurants to be sorted by price.

 

The ability to have restaurant reviews at your fingertips seems to becoming somewhat of a norm today. Another popular restaurant app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is Urbanspoon, which resembles a slot machine and allows users to find local places to eat based on price, location and cuisine, similar to TripAdvisor. TMCnet recently had the chance to review this application, and found it to be helpful while on-the-go.