International hotel and restaurant reviewer Zagat has extended its recently launched mobile service, allowing travellers to access consumer-generated reviews and listings directly from their mobile phones.
First introduced in August this year, zagat.mobi has gained new features over the last month and now offers comprehensive information on hotels, restaurants and nightlife in all of the international cities covered by the Zagat Survey.
It is free to sign up to the service at zagat.com, which can then be accessed globally from any PDA or smartphone. Free features include listing details (contact numbers, addresses and opening hours), and functions allowing the user to call the establishments directly with one click, send establishment details to a friend and find similar businesses nearby, as well as links to other mobile-friendly websites for weather, directions and other related topics.
Full subscribers to Zagat.com (charged at US$24.95 for twelve months) have access to additional services, including an advanced search tool and full Zagat ratings and reviews. More advanced options, such as mapping, are due to be rolled out over the next few months.
In other news Zagat is expanding its database to add more destinations to its current list of over 80 cities worldwide. Up-coming surveys include Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, many of which will be available on both zagat.com and zagat.mobi from Spring 2008.
Report by Karen
Eeuwens
