Skift Take
There’s no winning idea or secret sauce as reservations providers compete for diner loyalty, but the major players take vastly different approaches to the issue.
Are diners more loyal to their favorite restaurants or loyal to the method they use to reserve a table? That’s the fundamental question for consumer-facing reservations services competing for diner loyalty.
While two-thirds of restaurant reservations still happen on the phone, the third-party reservations services that support restaurants continue to work to make the digital experience more appealing. Digital reservations come through a few different pipelines: directly with the restaurant, usually through a widget on its website; through a reservation service’s app, like OpenTable, where a diner can see all available restaurants on any given reservations network, and, increasingly, third-party partners like Google and Facebook, who work with the existing reservations services to offer reservations via search or recommendation. (If you’ve heard the buzz about Instagram offering in-post reservations, it’s likely on this model as opposed to Instagram working with restaurants directly. They’ll work with the reservations providers that are already working with the restaurants.)
Resy CEO Ben Leventhal tells Skift Table that about a quarter of its reservations are made through Resy-specific channels, like the mobile app with the majority coming through the restaurant’s own channels. Google and other third-party partners are included in this numbe
