The Tourist Trap Paradox
How online reviews force most tourist trap restaurants to raise their game, but are causing a minority to become more aggressive in their deceipt.
When travelling to a new place, we’ve all witnessed the soul-crushing exasperation of falling victim to a tourist trap restaurant. A few minutes into our meal, just as the disappointing reality of the partially-reheated food begins to dawn on us, we suddenly notice the other clues we should have spotted earlier: the sticky menu in eight languages; the defrosted bread and olive oil we’ve been munching on but never ordered; the dispirited waiter outside who is aggressively flagging down innocent passers-by (“Hey, where you from?”).
And then the bill arrives, unceremoniously dropped on our table, knocking over the salt: 25€ for a sloppy, flavourless main course, 5€ for water, 5€ for coffee, “Service not include!!” obnoxiously scribbled by hand…
Why do they treat us this way? And, more frustratingly, how did we get duped?
Tourist traps rely largely on asymmetric information: They know more about their food, the value-for-money they offer and their competition than we do. They also take advantage of tourists’ feeling tired, inability to speak the local language or poor familiarity with the local currency. They have a whole host of tricks, involving cover charges and opaque prices, banking on the fact that few tourists like to start arguments. And they don’t need to worry about customer satisfaction: Happy or sad, most tourists will never return, so it’s better to milk them today for all they’re worth than invest in their loyalty.
After travelling and getting duped just a few times, we instinctively know what to look out for though.
Indeed, a rule of thumb seems to be that the more convenient the location and the higher the ratio of tourists to locals, the more likely we are to encounter tourist traps. In tourist hotspots, if we’re on the main piazza, opposite a major monument or in front of the train station, we have learnt from experience not to waste our time and money in the most visible restaurants, with their patronising ‘tourist’ menus, branded parasols and plastic chairs.
But occasionally, we are unfortunate enough to have no choice but to eat at a tourist trap restaurant. Airport departure lounges are a classic example, but the same applies when we are standing hungry, without a map or an internet connection, in the centre of a tourist hotspot.
In such situations, we make a few comparisons, pick the least offensive-looking food outlet and check the prices like a hawk.
Not-so-savvy travellers however are almost guaranteed to shuffle into one of the largest, most conveniently-located restaurants, best placed to deballast their wallets in exchange for a god-awful meal.
At least, this is how things used to work. Has TripAdvisor not neutered the power of the tourist trap in recent years? Do online reviews not ensure that restaurants compete more fiercely around tourist hotspots?
Largely, yes. It stands to reason that as more and more tourists check online reviews before choosing which restaurant to enter, each of these restaurants has a clear incentive to keep customers happy, rather than rip them off.
A virtuous circle can be attributed to the greater transparency that TripAdvisor and other online reviews offer: Restaurants offer better food at more competitive prices; customers are happy and write good reviews; waiting and kitchen staff can take pride in their work, are less likely to quit and more likely to earn good tips; restaurants stop having to rely on shady ‘tricks’ to make money; the location as a whole sheds its reputation as a collection of tourist traps. Honesty pays, in other words.
The worst restaurants, one should expect, with the most awful reviews and not willing to improve, risk going out of business. Good riddance.
But what if I told you that some of the worst tourist trap restaurants actually become even worse, yet stay in business, as a result of awful online reviews?
Precisely because online reviews have had such a positive general effect on restaurants catering to tourists and because, one assumes, the worst offenders have been weeded out by now, many travellers are now complacent.
For a few remaining bad restaurants, with dozens or even hundreds of terrible online reviews, it would be impossibly difficult for them to improve enough to catch up with their competitors. The investment required (in the form of new staff, better equipment, better ingredients etc) would most likely put them out of business. They’ve lost the review-checking customers already and they know it.
So their strategy now involves even more aggressive tourist trap ‘tricks’, even higher prices and preying on the unsuspecting tourists who fail to check online reviews. For every five customers lost due to poor reviews, it seems they need to royally screw over one customer in order to make up the margin.
Competition, therefore, has made mediocre players good and bad players evil.
This effect occurred to me whilst visiting a ‘strip’ of restaurants on a photogenic Greek beach recently, a magnet for European and North-American tourists. I was first of all (pleasantly) surprised that out of 8 restaurants, 7 of them had very good to excellent online reviews. And indeed, as my wife and I can confirm, their food was excellent, their prices fair, their service friendly – it was a free marketer’s (and foodie’s) dream come true.
But what about the other restaurant? Its reviews weren’t poor; they were dreadful. And there were lots of them, including tales of blatant lying and deception by the manager, physical aggression, customers in tears, hyper-inflated bills due to hidden prices (20€ for a beer) and, hilariously, “they even took the restaurant sign down so you don’t know what it’s called” (a fact I verified).
In other words, this restaurant, hidden in broad daylight amongst a handful of delightful competitors, was essentially a scam. Assuming there was truth in the hundreds of scathing online reviews, the staff would lure people in for an affordable lunch (15€ for two courses), then sting them for hundreds of euros in drinks and hidden charges. So a couple expecting to spend no more than 50€ on lunch might be presented with a bill for 120€.
Walking past this disaster of a restaurant, the tricks were easy to spot once you knew what their strategy was (no menu on display, an empty space where their sign used to be). I felt so bad for the deeply unhappy-looking customers seated inside, who clearly had not read the reviews. No doubt had they been delighted by their recent experience at neighbouring restaurants and thought nothing of trying out the one next door. How bad can it be?, they wondered. Boy, were they in for a surprise.
The point here is not to say that thanks to online reviews, most restaurants have raised their game, whilst others have stood still. It is to emphasise that some, thankfully a minority, have in fact doubled down on their shady practices and become positively evil in the way they treat customers.
Online reviews have had a tremendously positive impact on the quality and value for money of restaurants, probably nowhere more so than in tourist hotspots (where the room for improvement was greatest). But the principle of caveat emptor, or “buyer beware”, is as true as ever.
Whilst the likelihood of eating at a bad restaurant has fallen, the chances of eating at a terrible restaurant are arguably higher than before. In other words, our risk (defined as probability x impact) is no lower in the age of online reviews than before.
So don’t get complacent. Don’t rely on the wisdom of crowds. Always check reviews. And enjoy your meal.
