Restaurant guide publisher Tim Zagat is branching out into guides on every sort of leisure activity, and he’s taking his show online and into the wireless realm.
Zagat Survey will soon cover subjects such as sports cars, golf courses, fashion, spas and resorts – and “anything people like to talk about before they spend money,” Zagat told The Post.
The new content is to be available through zagat.com by the summer.
Breaking out of the slim book mold, the content will also be available on cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and even on radio and in magazines. Discussions are under way with a talent agency and a production company to work up a pilot for a TV show based on canvassing people’s opinions.
“Rather than ‘Ask Martha,’ the concept will be ‘Ask You,'” Zagat said.
Zagat plans to use Internet technology to expand the company’s “organized word-of-mouth” concept across all areas of leisure. “If someone is looking for a place to play golf, they’re better off seeing what 1,000 people thought of a certain course rather than just one friend.”
The Internet allows the company to collect and process votes rapidly. However, Zagat is wary of the difference between paper and electronic votes. The New York book is compiled by having frequent restaurant-goers compare 2,000 eateries once a year.
“We find that online, though, people tend to come in after a meal, and if they have an opinion, they’re either really happy or really unhappy. They’re a lot more emotional about it.”
He added that security is still an issue.
Zagat Survey – which publishes a restaurant column in The Post – has had success in Japan where DoCoMo i-Mode cell phones, which access the Internet directly, have exploded in popularity in the last year. MobileZagat – the online Zagat Survey for Tokyo restaurants – allows users to locate their nearest eateries by type of food, see a map and click through to make a voice call for a reservation.
Similar services are planned for the U.S., with Oracle, Motorola and AT&T Pocketnet. However, Zagat himself estimates U.S. cell-phone infrastructure to be two years behind Japan’s. Zagat already has stakes in OpenTable.com and Foodline.com, another Internet reservation endeavor.
“The beauty of the sort of online travel guide we’re planning is you can go into detail. It will have stuff like, ‘How kid-friendly is the Met?’ Is it good for sitting down, and whether the bathrooms are clean. Or ‘Ellis Island: How long could you stand it with a 10-year-old on a hot day?'”
The 20-year-old company is not known for wasting money on advertising. When he does advertise, Zagat likes to trade books for space. “We got lucky in Japan – DoCoMo used an image of our book going into the phone and food coming out the other end. Book sales shot up 25 percent.”
The cross-platform play comes two months after the company received $31.2 million in equity financing from investors led by General Atlantic Partners LLC of Greenwich, Conn. Other backers include venture-capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft; Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Labs, and Allen & Co. banker Nancy Peretsman.
Tim Zagat expects to launch his IPO “in a year – depending on the market.”