Booking your restaurant online
How far do you think the Internet can go in helping us decide which restaurant to go to?
A survey carried out last year suggested 62% of us already conduct research on the Internet before booking a restaurant and online reviews are increasingly shaping our decisions. This may come as no surprise, but what about being able to go online to book a table at your favourite restaurant?
Livebookings’ reservation service could transform the way we search for and find restaurants. Although the concept is not a new one, it can only be a matter of time before consumers catch on and real-time restaurant booking becomes the natural next step in a search. Gone would be the days when you can only ring to book at certain times of the day to suit the restaurant in order to check availability.
Some of the restaurants listed on our website, eatsomewhere.co.uk, are already offering this service (see Thai Edge) and it’s not difficult to envisage more and more making the transition to an online system. So will it take off? Surely you only have to look at how popular booking a hotel room or a flight online has become to realise the potential. Soon, our nights out at our favourite eatery will begin with just another simple online experience.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:01 am
There are two main reasons why online reservations are taking off for restaurants.
The first is consumer driven - it’s easy, convenient and free. Instead of having to wait until the restaurant is open to make a phone call, or to wait for someone to answer the phone when they are open, you can reserve 24/7. As you mention above, many consumers are making a decision about where to dine online. It’s only natural that by offering a booking service at that decision point in that medium that you’ll get the reservation.
The second reason is restaurant operations driven. From our own experience at Livebookings Network of delivering online bookings to restaurants, we can see that 18% of bookings made on our system are generated outside normal opening hours (10pm – 10am) and 44% of bookings are made during busy service times (12pm – 3pm and 6pm – 10pm) - taken from an average booking month. These are times when you are either unable to take a phone call because you are closed or unwilling to take a phone call because you are busy. By offering online booking you can provide a better service to dining guests and to prospective bookers. In addition you can grow your own customer database for future email marketing and customer retention.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:18 am
restaurant take reservations…
Good job with Wine Imbiber ” Our First Day in Chianti. restaurant take reservations are the best….
April 6th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Great job. Loved the blog!