Honor those bookings
OpenTable joins effort to discourage no-shows
When it comes to making reservations, OpenTable is now encouraging diners to “book responsibly.”
The mantra is part of the company’s campaign, begun Tuesday, designed to combat the restaurant industry’s battle against diners who fail to show up for reservations or cancel at the last minute. OpenTable’s efforts reflect a growing global conversation among restaurateurs and booking services about noshows in the digital age.
Australia’s largest online booking site, Dimmi, pushed the topic back into the spotlight last month, when it blacklisted nearly 40,000 diners for skipping out on reservations.
In the past, OpenTable communicated its reservations with diners by sending a confirmation email when the booking took place, and then a second email reminder four hours before the seating. With this new campaign, OpenTable is sending more emails to diners, adding a text-messaging system and using push notifications on its app to remind diners about a pending reservation.
“Technology should be an enabler to decrease no-show rates, not make them worse,” said Scott Jampol, senior vice
president of marketing at OpenTable.
OpenTable was founded in 1998 and remains the country’s largest reservation service, despite the continued growth of Tock, the Chicago ticketing service used by high-end Bay Area restaurants like San Francisco’s Lazy Bear, Healdsburg’s Single Thread and most recently, the French Laundry in Yountville.
More than 21 million diners per month use OpenTable’s online platform to book reservations at more than 40,000 restaurants. OpenTable would not share how many users were no-shows.
OpenTable has a “four-strike” policy: If a user fails to show up for four reservations within a 12-month period, the account is terminated. However, OpenTable does not penalize lastminute cancellations, allowing users to cancel a reservation up until 30 minutes before the booking time.
Kim Alter, chef-owner of Nightbird in San Francisco, commented on the OpenTable campaign, saying a last-minute cancellation or no-show “makes it even harder” to run a business in a Bay Area dining environment where profit margins are razor thin.
Dimmi’s no-show rate after it instituted the blacklist dropped by a quarter. And Tock has a no-show rate below 1 percent.
Yelp’s reservation service has a no-show rate of 3 to 4 percent in San Francisco, but company officials said the numbers have been declining over the last 12 months.
That’s in large part due to a pilot program allowing diners to confirm or cancel a reservation with a text. More than 60 percent of diners confirm. Before the program, only 20 percent of diners confirmed their reservations, Yelp said.