TURNING THE TABLES
Forward-thinking operators aren’t just looking at reservation systems as a way of getting customers in the door – they’re using data in smarter ways to keep them coming back. Elly Earls reports
Sponsor’s comment: Bookatable
Bookatable, a Michelin group company, is Europe’s most connected restaurant marketplace, with 15,000 restaurant customers and millions of diners booking every month. The company works with both restaurateurs and diners to bring them together in a single, vibrant and dynamic marketplace. Headquartered in London, and with offices in Hamburg and Stockholm, the company has restaurants in more than 39 countries. For diners, Bookatable
makes exploring, discovering and booking a restaurant easy through their app and website, on mobile or desktop. From high-street favourites to local eateries or the finest Michelin- starred restaurants, Bookatable has it all, with thousands of restaurants to choose from across Europe. Its cloud technology helps
restaurants manage their bookings and restaurant floor, and to successfully fill tables when needed, delivering more than 2.5 million diners each month to its restaurant customers from online reservations. For further information please visit
www.bookatable.co.uk
6 | Technology Prospectus 2020 T
his has been an eventful year in the restaurant reservations space. While integrations with Facebook, Instagram and, most importantly, Reserve by Google, now offer operators the potential to drive an immense amount of traffic to their businesses, advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and voice technology are starting to transform the way they interact with their diners to encourage them to come back. Meanwhile, the shift continues away from booking over the phone to online and mobile, making it important for any booking system to be mobile-friendly. Zonal’s Go Technology research has shown that online has overtaken the telephone as the preferred method of mak- ing a reservation, while 60% of ResDiary’s online reservations are now done on mobile. At the same time, restaurants continue to grapple with one of their biggest challenges – no-shows – a problem that many industry commentators say has been exacerbated by the growth in third-party booking platforms and is estimated to cost the sector around £16b a year. So what does this all mean for restaurateurs? What should they be looking for in their book- ing tools? And what is the potential for 2020?
COLLABORATIVE THINKING Peter Clack is the managing director for UK and Ireland at Bookatable. He says difficult trading conditions have focused industry sup- pliers on the big issues that restaurants are fac- ing, namely, how to operate more efficiently and attract more diners. “At Bookatable by Michelin we use a shorthand for these chal- lenges: ‘manage’ and ‘fill’,” he says. Key to achieving both is integration, some- thing Bookatable has been focused on more than ever over the last 12 months. It’s devel- oping its own distribution channels and work-
ing with digital publishers, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Instagram, to ensure that its restaurant partners are available as widely as possibly, whether that be through an app, mobile or online. For example, Bookatable’s integration with Instagram gives restaurants the chance to turn pictures, posts, shares and tags into diners. Bookatable reservations are also available within Apple Maps, but it’s the inte- gration with Reserve by Google that Clack says is the most exciting. “Our integration doesn’t just enable book- ings in the search engine’s results pages, but also in maps and other digital assets,” he explains. “And it doesn’t stop there. Google’s users are even offered the opportunity to search for ‘brunch near me’ when they men- tion ‘brunch’ in a text message.”
www.thecaterer.com
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