Tripadvisor Overstates The Number Of Restaurants In Montreal

I spend my days working in the food Instagram game.

I started noticing a bunch of Montreal restaurant Instagram pages I’ve previously contacted have since been renamed or disabled.

Other brands that haven’t had any new posts and when I search for them I see the Permanently Closed label slapped on them from Google. Most of the brands that have closed, definitively, are still listed on Tripadvisor with no indication they have closed. I once tried contacting them about removing these dead listings but they never answered me.

That means the 6391 establishments listed in the Montreal region is not a real reflection of  the number of restaurants in the city.

I’m not sure if this data is formally kept anywhere, I’m certain the city has that data with regards to restaurant permits.

Then there are all the food places that ride dirty with unnoticeable income levels. 

This matters if people take Tripadvisor as a valid source of data when conducting market research. .

After Tripadvisor, Google Business is the next best repository that’s public

I found this cool article that says Google shows 4698 Restaurants in Montreal.

This feels like a more accurate number given the rough estimate I can provide for % of pages on Tripadvisor I think are dead listings. Now an important thing to keep in mind is this article just lists businesses that are listed on Google. It doesn’t explicitly state that businesses that are permanently or temporarily closed are excluded from the data. 

It’s also worth noting that not every business ends up with a Google Business profile. Though I think it’s a safe bet that even the people who hate social media, understand the importance of Google Reviews. They have a large impact on attracting tourists. 

The article does say that we have far less fast food and more coffee shops, cafes and bars compared to other cities. That’s pretty cool. Most restaurants in Montreal also seem to try and make food with real, fresh food.

I knew our city was blessed like that. 

In 2022 the Association Restauration Quebec (ARQ) folk said we had 5170 licensed restaurants

Now to be clear, restaurant is a very loose term, but they are the people who issue those permits. 

The ARQ says these licenses include a variety of establishments such as:

• Full on restaurants

• Catering companies

• Grocery stores, or frankly, any business that sells pre-made meals

• Anything that sells food for immediate consumption

Without a full breakdown or more recent numbers we can see that already TripAdvisor easily has 1000 or so listings that should be removed. I’d argue that number is probably even higher. Tripadvisor is a digital player and that requires someone to have made a listing for the restaurant in the first place.

If I were to hazard a guess I would assume there are less restaurants now than in 2022. 

Though with the way things are changing there are new restaurants opened every month, by following the blog sphere, I’d say at least 10-15 new places each month. 

Tracking the closures is harder. 

Sometimes, the eatery location has no internet presence at all

There are a lot of restaurants and stores that don’t have social media.

In a lot of cases they did that, tried it, said nope and moved on. This means social media and conventional digital trails will never track every restaurant. There are some popping places in the random corners that kill it without knowing what an Instagram even is. 

Literally I’ll talk to the children of owners who tell me how their parents refuse to acknowledge social media marketing as valid in 2024. 

Something like TripAdvisor is great for finding and documenting those. In fairness to Tripadvisor, the top 500 restaurants are all active and popping based on a quick scan. The issue comes from the top level number. 

Most people are never going to browse for the 2994th best restaurant in Montreal. But it does potentially inflate its value compared to something like Resto Montreal that seems to vet their listings better and only says 4263 restaurants are in Montreal. 

While it may be lazy research, what if this number misleads marketers into thinking there is 50% more potential to the food industry than there actually is.

Or maybe people do dig deeper, it took 3 Google searches for me to find out that 2022 number. It’d just be nice to have a more real time, accurate source.

Anyway I was curious so I googled, if I’m off on something let me know and I’ll correct. 

Live Long and Prosper Everyone