"1.8 Billion Tmap Data Verified Restaurants... Choose According to Your Taste"

Restaurant and Cafe Recommendation Site 'T-map Misik Road' Planned by SKT Team Leader Han Hyun-jung
"More Trustworthy Than Existing Review, Recommendation, and Advertisement Types"

Han Hyun-jung, team leader of the Digital Communication Team at SK Telecom, is explaining the gourmet recommendation website T-map Gourmet Road.
[Photo by SK Telecom]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heung-soon] "We planned the recommendation service with the intention of providing fun content based on reliable data."

Han Hyun-jung, team leader of the Digital Communication Team at SK Telecom, explained the background of creating 'T-map Gourmet Road' on the 17th. T-map Gourmet Road is a dedicated restaurant recommendation website launched on the 3rd. It carefully selects data on restaurants and cafes frequently visited by users of SK Telecom's map service 'T-map' and guides users to suitable eateries by region.

Out of approximately 760,000 restaurants and 120,000 cafes registered nationwide on T-map, about 30,000 restaurants and 2,400 cafes were selected based on visit frequency. This is the result of analyzing about 1.8 billion visit data records over the past five years from more than 18 million T-map users.

Han said, "Unlike existing restaurant search services on portal sites that rely on word-of-mouth or recommendations from visitors and include commercial advertisements, T-map Gourmet Road is based on data frequently accessed by drivers, so its reliability is high."

T-map Gourmet Road is the first to integrate the vast big data stored in T-map into content. Han and four other members of the Digital Communication Team prepared this service over six months. Han explained, "Restaurants are a category that does not divide preferences and interests many people. I wanted to create content that enhances the user experience, including younger generations, based on the data SK Telecom possesses."

T map Gourmet Road
Photo by SK Telecom

T-map Gourmet Road is designed to provide restaurant information tailored to user characteristics. By sequentially entering the visited area, gender, age, and companions such as parents, children, or partners, different information frequently visited by users with similar conditions is provided. Han said, "The process of constructing the logic to carefully select restaurants by type was more complicated than big data analysis."

For example, if a user’s restaurant visit data shows previous searches for kids' cafes or facilities for infants, they are presumed to have children, and the restaurants they frequently visit are classified as child-friendly places. Driver data showing short trips within 1-2 km in a specific area is judged as locals, and the restaurants they often visit are selected as 'local recommended restaurants.'

Detailed information includes graphs showing visitor frequency by time, allowing users to check less crowded times, and it also guides places to visit nearby after dining. The 'Insta-style Cafe' featuring cafes good for taking photos is also highlighted as a specialized service.

Han previously worked in internet service planning at Widerden and Netmarble and joined SK Telecom in 2005 with experience. He has been responsible for service planning to increase user interest, including building the T World site, membership, roaming, and social marketing.

He emphasized, "T-map Gourmet Road is the first step to providing information tailored to users by utilizing big data. We will continue to think about how to deliver fun and innovative content based on data."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.