Comments on: OpenTable and Restaurant Marketing

By: Restaurant Booking System

Restaurant Booking System — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 05:48:32 +0000

Its interesting to see the number of competitors now entering this space, (disclosure we are one of them). The fact is that the analysis above is correct, Open Table has a dated business model that has delivered the founders millions of $ but will never deliver value to the majority of their customers.

By: Aya

Aya — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:03:50 +0000

I think there's real value in OpenTable, especially if you're not very organised... it saves so much time to have like a computer system store all booking details, but I don't see why they should charge for new entering new bookings? And I don't see the point in paying them for the opentable.com customers, they're marketing to all their restaurants, it's not like they're only doing it for me. These customers may come once and go to a different open table restaurant the second time... right?
I came across this website www.eveve.com in google, it seems like they're taking on open table in Europe. Is there much competition for open table, it may be a good thing, competition means fairer pricing

By: AsiagoSF

AsiagoSF — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:45:20 +0000

flawed analysis: it assumes that all OpenTable rservations are incremental. if you're familiar with rigorous business and marketing analysis you'd know this is a best-case scenario which is rarely adopted as a guideline

By: Krishnan

Krishnan — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 07:36:50 +0000

i run a small restaurant in scotland. today we had a sales chap who came by to sell his sales pitch. his figures were very interesting and tempting, until he mentioned the fee involved. hardware installation and training are free (discounted from close to £400.00). monthly fee of £99.00 (12 months contract)
few points to be noted -
1. every booking we get through our own site is charged at £0.25 – currently my website has an in house feature to book a table online and i receive the booking in an email format on my mobile phone. internet package comes free with my phone contract
2. every telephone call booking we get, if data entered into the OT live system we are charged £0.25 – currently incoming calls are free and we write the customer's details in the diary which is later entered into my customer database on my PC. also free!!
3. every time we have a walk in customer and if the details are entered on the OT system, we are charged £0.25 – i instead give a feedback form to the customer with a few mint chocolates and i get all details filled in. almost free, apart from the chocolates
4. every time we get a booking through OT website we are charged £2.00 per person (that is about 10% of my income generated)
mathematics -
on n average i get about 25 customers a day. 10% regulars and 90% new (word of mouth). for entering the 90% new customer's details into the database i will be charged £5.62/day
assuming an additional 2 customers/day from OT, i will be charged £4.00/day
for a 30 day period – my total would be (including the monthly fee) £387.60
total additional income from OT = £900. almost 43% of my income is lost!!! the other way of seeing it is my monthly income goes up by £512.40. the overall income per month goes up by 4.25%
conclusion – there are plenty of ways to generate more than £512.40 with an investment of £387.60
OpenTable IS NOT WORTH THE HASSLE!!
i am sure the OT concept will work for many business' out there, but beware it is not the best system for most restaurants. (my experience from bookings received from toptable over the last few months)
on another note… try concentrating on http://www.tripadvisor.com
this site has reviews and it has been working for me. check out SPICE DABBA, ABERDEEN on tripadvisor

By: ryanborn

ryanborn — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 04:30:00 +0000

I seriously fabulous analysis Jonathan. Totally fantastic. The trusty TI-83 comment made me lol!

By: nikol77

nikol77 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:47:17 +0000

Online restaurant reservations company OpenTable filed for an IPO on Friday, revealing their finances for the world to see. The SEC filing contains all the financial figures you would expect it is very good..

NYC Hotels

By: brett1211

brett1211 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:27:09 +0000

excellent post. over the course of your research, did you ever hear how much open table pays for affiliate referrals? again, great post.

By: Chris Plotner

Chris Plotner — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:04:09 +0000

In this analysis, one important factor to note is that OpenTable users only receive points for a reservation IF THE RESERVATION ORIGINATES FROM OPENTABLE. I got burned by this once, where I made a reservation by linking to OpenTable from a restaurant's website. From now on, if I see that a restaurant's reservations are powered by OpenTable, I will open a new browser and initiate the reservation through OpenTable.com. This will distort the perceived value of OpenTable in generating new business. I do not use OpenTable to find new places to eat, only to gain a marginal benefit from making an online reservation at a restaurant I have already chosen.

By: inaki

inaki — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:47:47 +0000

Interesting reflection. Would you pay then $2.61 per head for new customers if they came on party that includes 6 or more people?

By: James Brown

James Brown — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:48:52 +0000

We hear Opentable is running scared in the UK, desperately offering free hardware, installs and training to gain very expensive, non profitable market share. Opentable is scared witless by Livebookings and Toptable and to worry them even further there are rumours of a strategic alliance between Toptable and Livebookings erstwhile reservation back office partner, Quadranet. This could be a big worry for Livebookings as their own back office solution, Loghos, is not exactly fantastic and their small restaurant solution, Console, is less than intuitive.

The prize they are all fighting for is the right to supply an online reservation solution to D&D, formerly Conran, in London but there are rumours D&D has decided to specify and build its own reservation and marketing solution.