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And how do you feel about they service? Do you think it can be improved? I've been tinkering with the idea of building something similar for the European marke

by edu 18y ago

And how do you feel about they service? Do you think it can be improved? I've been tinkering with the idea of building something similar for the European market, with some improvements (if the reservation fails recommend available time-frames, or other restaurants in the neighborhood or similar restaurants...), recommendation or new restaurants (think of netflix for restaurants), CRM features for the restaurants and made the system "open" so anyone can integrate the service in whatever channel they use (web, SMS, phone, the-next-big-thing...) sharing the commission. By the way, I'm open to talk... My mail address is on my profile :)

DenisM 18y ago
I've been using it for several years. It does one thing and it does it very well - reservations. I don't have to call anyone over the phone anymore. I can check several restaurants and find one available at a glance, not by calling several places in turn. I love it. There are adjacent features that could be added. Since they know for a fact who I am and that I was there, my review could be very valuable to others. Better yet, others review could be very valuable to me, especially when I'm out of town. An automatic system that matches people with my taste and shows "good" (for me) restaurants when I'm away from home would be great for me and for good restaurants around the world.
apathy 18y ago
And how do you feel about they service? Do you think it can be improved? Maybe. I think that they do an extremely good job of the one thing they set out to do, and it would be very hard to challenge them right now, given the strong relationships they have built with their partners. Personally, I suspect that finding a niche where the main player is far less competent than OpenTable would make for a more compelling business opportunity, unless you honestly believe that the fall-through recommendation strategy 1) hasn't occurred to them, 2) isn't already being developed internally to OpenTable, 3) isn't applicable to other services with more churn. The final point is the one I would choose to concentrate upon -- find an industry where the players are less loyal and more open to increasing their marginal profits. Restaurants are exceptionally vulnerable to the whims of the public, yet the business is exceptionally prone to supplier and brand loyalty. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but that's just me. OpenTable executes well, and I would be very leery of trying to take them on. It could be done, I just think it would be a lot more challenging than it first appears.
shafqat 18y ago
I've been thinking about taking on the European market as well. I'm based out of Geneva... Would be interesting to see how European restaurants respond to this concept - I find them generally behind the curve. I still haven't done enough research into European competitors, so will do that first, find out what we can do better, then get in touch ;-)
Erwin 18y ago
I've used toptable.co.uk for that which is pretty good (most of their restaurants are in London but I've booked places in Rome succesfully too). Key points are good description of the restaurant, accurate sample menus, pictures and reviews from other patrons. I think just the website won't sell unless you get the selection volume of toptable; but a turnkey reservation system + web front end would be helpful because a restaurant can link to you and let you take over the reservation instead of having someone have to answer the phones. Make it subscription based to minimize up-front cost; heck even offer restaurants to host an easily-created mini-site they can use as their official web page; there are loads of places that don't have a website but maybe if all they have to upload is a few pictures etc. you could go even further here allowing easy online menu creation, export to pdf, cost calculation, whatnot. toptable is good but not great because they usually don't integrate with the restaurants' systems, so they have people sitting and calling the restaurants to reserve, so there's lag between reservation and confirmation (and 50% of the time in London my first/last name end up swapped or mutilated) A local service here in DK is dinnerbooking.com which gives you the actual dates & times something is available. I am far likely to book a table at such a place than one where I have to phone them and hope to get through. Alas they're a pretty slow Web 1.5 site.

by edu 18y ago

DenisM 18y ago

I've been using it for several years. It does one thing and it does it very well - reservations. I don't have to call anyone over the phone anymore. I can check several restaurants and find one available at a glance, not by calling several places in turn. I love it. There are adjacent features that could be added. Since they know for a fact who I am and that I was there, my review could be very valuable to others. Better yet, others review could be very valuable to me, especially when I'm out of town. An automatic system that matches people with my taste and shows "good" (for me) restaurants when I'm away from home would be great for me and for good restaurants around the world.

apathy 18y ago

And how do you feel about they service? Do you think it can be improved? Maybe. I think that they do an extremely good job of the one thing they set out to do, and it would be very hard to challenge them right now, given the strong relationships they have built with their partners. Personally, I suspect that finding a niche where the main player is far less competent than OpenTable would make for a more compelling business opportunity, unless you honestly believe that the fall-through recommendation strategy 1) hasn't occurred to them, 2) isn't already being developed internally to OpenTable, 3) isn't applicable to other services with more churn. The final point is the one I would choose to concentrate upon -- find an industry where the players are less loyal and more open to increasing their marginal profits. Restaurants are exceptionally vulnerable to the whims of the public, yet the business is exceptionally prone to supplier and brand loyalty. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but that's just me. OpenTable executes well, and I would be very leery of trying to take them on. It could be done, I just think it would be a lot more challenging than it first appears.

shafqat 18y ago

I've been thinking about taking on the European market as well. I'm based out of Geneva... Would be interesting to see how European restaurants respond to this concept - I find them generally behind the curve. I still haven't done enough research into European competitors, so will do that first, find out what we can do better, then get in touch ;-)

Erwin 18y ago

I've used toptable.co.uk for that which is pretty good (most of their restaurants are in London but I've booked places in Rome succesfully too). Key points are good description of the restaurant, accurate sample menus, pictures and reviews from other patrons. I think just the website won't sell unless you get the selection volume of toptable; but a turnkey reservation system + web front end would be helpful because a restaurant can link to you and let you take over the reservation instead of having someone have to answer the phones. Make it subscription based to minimize up-front cost; heck even offer restaurants to host an easily-created mini-site they can use as their official web page; there are loads of places that don't have a website but maybe if all they have to upload is a few pictures etc. you could go even further here allowing easy online menu creation, export to pdf, cost calculation, whatnot. toptable is good but not great because they usually don't integrate with the restaurants' systems, so they have people sitting and calling the restaurants to reserve, so there's lag between reservation and confirmation (and 50% of the time in London my first/last name end up swapped or mutilated) A local service here in DK is dinnerbooking.com which gives you the actual dates & times something is available. I am far likely to book a table at such a place than one where I have to phone them and hope to get through. Alas they're a pretty slow Web 1.5 site.