Yelp, an online city guide that helps connect consumers with local businesses, began operating in Poland last week.

Founded in the US in 2004, Yelp is an online directory of local businesses such as restaurants, shops, bars, and other service outlets that gives members the opportunity to rate and review the places they visit. Yelp has 78 million online visitors every month. From last week, Poles have been able to register at Yelp.pl, as well as download it as an app for iPhones and for Android-operated cell phones.

Yelp’s new markets vice president Miriam Warren said that entering Poland was a natural choice, considering that Poland has relatively high economic growth, and has avoided falling into recession despite the ongoing global economic slowdown.

“The industriousness of the Polish people, their openness to new technologies as well as the fact that there isn’t another site like this [in Poland], were our reasons for entering the Polish market,” she added.

Development first

Although in the US, the UK, Canada and Ireland, businesses are able to advertise on Yelp, this will not be possible in Poland right away, since the company’s priority is not to monetize but to develop the service.

“Our real focus here in Poland for the near future is to create the best local guide – and it is tough to give a date for now when we will start to sell. It is not going to be any time soon,” Ms Warren said.

Analysts are skeptical about the possibility of the service meeting with success in Poland.

“The problem with foreign online services is that they wrongly assume that if a service worked in their country, all they need to do is translate it and it will be a success elsewhere,” said Sylwester Kozak, an IT market analyst at portal e-biznes.pl. “Take for example the complete failure of eBay in Poland,” he added.

Moreover, Yelp will not have an office in Poland, meaning its knowledge of the local market is likely to be limited, Mr Kozak said.

He explained that if such a firm doesn’t have a base in the country in which it is present, then it is less likely to be successful because it will be less able to understand what appeals to local internet users.

He added that what determines the success of such a portal is its marketing, and so far Yelp hasn’t been advertised at all.

Poland is the 18th country that Yelp is entering and the first CEE country in which the service has been made available.