Bếp Mẹ ỉn, a small, family-run Vietnamese restaurant located in the heart of Vietnam’s largest city, isn’t easy to find. That’s the point—finding its inconspicuous entryway in an alley around the corner from Ben Thanh Market is part of the experience. It’s designed to feel like you’re stepping into a family home, and boasts a 12-page menu that mixes traditional comfort food like banh dap with street food classics like bánh mì.
While finding the restaurant in real-life takes a little bit of foresight, founder Hoa Pham wanted to make discovering their business online incredibly easy. As travel began to pick up again in Vietnam in 2022, she had her work cut out for her. Bếp Mẹ ỉn’s average monthly Tripadvisor page views hovered in the low hundreds for the entire month. With over 3,000 restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City to compete with, that meant that very few diners were discovering their incredible cuisine.
Here’s how they worked with Tripadvisor to increase their online visibility:
How Ads and Premium worked together
Hoa and the rest of the Bếp Mẹ ỉn team decided to go all-in on Tripadvisor to best capture the influx of travelers returning to Vietnam after years of lockdown. They knew that they offered some of the best comfort food in the city—once someone visited their restaurant, they were bound to leave a great review—but it was difficult to get someone through their doors in the first place.
They purchased Tripadvisor Ads and Premium to gain more visibility on the platform and increase the number of reviews. The three products work seamlessly together:
- Tripadvisor Ads provided more opportunities for diners who were searching for Vietnamese food to find their restaurant’s listing.
- Once someone lands on Bếp Mẹ ỉn’s Tripadvisor page, Tripadvisor Premium features such as Storyboard, Top 3 Reasons, and Favorite Review showcase the best the restaurant has to offer, turning those page visitors into customers. Premium also allows the restaurant to engage with diners everywhere and easily manage their reputation across multiple platforms, seeing reviews across Tripadvisor, Google, Facebook and more all on the same page.
Together, these three products created a positive feedback loop for the restaurant, increasing their traffic, driving more customers to the restaurant, and building a base of great reviews.
650% increase in monthly traffic with Tripadvisor in less than a year
Bếp Mẹ ỉn saw an immediate increase in their traffic. And while advertising clicks drove some of this growth, it was actually their organic page views that jumped the most.
In less than a year of using Tripadvisor Ads and Premiumtheir traffic exploded:
- 650% lift in traffic to Bếp Mẹ ỉn’s Tripadvisor page in February 2023, compared to June 2022
- More page views which translated to more diners, who in turn leave reviews
- This steady stream of reviews helped catapult them into the top 50 restaurants in Ho Chi Minh on Tripadvisor
Of course, this only works because Bếp Mẹ ỉn also serves high quality, delicious food with great service—more than half of diners who leave a review for their restaurant give them five bubbles. As one recent five-bubble review stated, “We went to this little gem on the basis of Tripadvisor reviews and were not disappointed.”
With Tripadvisor, Bếp Mẹ ỉn now sees more visitors to their listing page, more customers in their restaurant, and more great reviews. These positive reviews continue to drive their success on the platform and give them the confidence to further invest in their online presence with Tripadvisor.
