HungryGoWhere believes in being transparent with you, our user community, on the kind of advertising we do on our website. Our commitment to you is that these advertising will never interfere with HungryGoWhere’s independence in its reviews and ratings. This is something that we are already communicating clearly to restaurants before we accept advertising money from them; we understand that you would be interested to know this too.

HungryGoWhere’s Independence on its Ratings and Reviews

Running HungryGoWhere is an expensive project. Despite giving up our previous jobs to run this website full time because we truly believe in the value that this website will bring to foodies in Singapore and elsewhere in the region, the stark reality is that some form of advertising revenue needs to be earned in order for us to keep this website going. Hence, please understand that we do need to make this project financially sustainable by accepting advertisements. However, our pledge to you is that we will always design our advertising products in such a way that would ensure that HungryGoWhere’s independence on its ratings and reviews will never be compromised.

You have the right to write what you want on any restaurant, subject to our Review Policy which is designed as a code of conduct for you. Under no circumstances does HungryGoWhere’s management force you to write positive reviews; we just ask that you write responsibly so as to preserve the reliability of reviews here on HungryGoWhere.

Advertisement products on our website

We offer several advertising products and services on our website. We would like to explain some of them:

1. Monthly Feature List: Every month, we recommend ten places to go to. This is a sponsored feature, as the restaurants pay us to cover our cost of taking photographs and design work for organizing this feature. This will also be made clear to you that this list is a sponsored feature as the word “Sponsored” is clearly labeled at the top of this feature. This feature allows the restaurants to be exposed to you in a more visible manner.

2. Reviewers word of mouth session: For this session, we select well established HungryGoWhere reviewers (they are either trusted by the community, have written many reviews or have an engaging writing style) to come down to the restaurant to participate in a food tasting session. The objective is to allow the restaurant to get honest, independent feedback from these reviewers, and the reviewers do so by writing a review on the restaurant after they have tasted the food, experienced the ambience and tested the service. These reviewers are NOT RENUMERATED in any form. They however do not pay for the meal. There is NO REQUIREMENT that they write a positive review; all reviews written by them are NOT manipulated in any way by HungryGoWhere management or the restaurants, and are presented “as it is” by the reviewer. These reviews are highlighted clearly with the following words “Word of Mouth Session Review”. If you are interested to join our Word of Mouth Session, sign up as a member, write more quality reviews, earn the trust of your fellow HungryGoWhere reviewers and we will send you an invite when the opportunity arises.  

3. Priority Search: This allows the sponsoring restaurant to be seen at the top of search results. It is clear that this is a sponsored search result as the words “Sponsored Result” is highlighted above that search result at the top. You will then make a decision on whether this is a restaurant that you want to go try out.

4. Feedback on Negative Reviews and How to Manage Them: In addition, many restaurants are not sure on how to handle negative comments and frequently convey to us their uneasiness about these reviews; if they are at a loss as to how to deal with these negative reviews, we do help advise them that the best way is to engage the unhappy reviewer, understand what happened, and try to win them back. We believe that by providing this advice to them, it would help benefit both the restaurants and the HungryGoWhere community in the long term as the reviewer who wrote the negative review is now happy that the restaurant has responded in a positive manner while the restaurant wins back the heart of an unhappy customer.

5. Flash/Banner/Voucher Ads: Every month, we run flash, banner and voucher ads for restaurants that want to increase their exposure to you. You would then sees these ads and make a decision on whether to try these restaurants out.

Summary

We communicate to our restaurant clients that our role is to help increase their exposure to the community. However it is the restaurant’s job to impress the community and retain these customers.

We hope that the above explanation will shed light on our advertising policy and our permanent commitment to maintaining HungryGoWhere’s independence on its ratings and reviews. This is a continued extension of our efforts to be transparent to you so that you fully understand what we are doing and the reasons for doing so. Thank you so much for your kind understanding. Without your support, to which we would always be grateful for, there will be no HungryGoWhere and we are fully aware that you must always come first.

You can contact Hoong An at +65 6256-1538 or email him at hoongan@hungrygowhere.com to find out more about the advertising policy and packages we offer.