That is true, and I've certainly used them in that sort of context and will do again. However, while you can't order a meal out off Amazon (though you can of course order a takeaway from Deliveroo or whatever, and I've now stayed at a couple of small hotels which instead of offering their own room service encourage you to do exactly that and might even provide plates etc) what you can do these days is spend 2 minutes on your phone Googling restaurants and reading reviews, so you can have a much better idea about independents than you used to and so at least I am more likely to use them in an unknown place than I was.
This is one of the great paradoxes of the Internet - it obviously makes things easier for very big business (e.g. Amazon), but it also makes things easier for the very small guy, too (I could set up a business with worldwide reach and launch it today if I wanted, basically). The big loser is sat there in the middle - the medium-size, mediocre chain business that people used to default to because it was easier - the TGIs, the Pizza Hut/Pizzaexpress etc, or in shopping terms the Burton's/Topman, Mothercare, Dixons etc (and goodness knows how WH Smugg's reading room and voucher shop stays in business) - and now they aren't doing because it's easier to get something better and cheaper, those businesses are failing.
