Skift Take
The reservations landscape has changed significantly over the past year. While the big players are (mostly) the same, new technology, new leadership, and new strategies keep the game interesting.
What changes a year — or, in this case, a month — can make.
A year ago, Skift Table took a detailed look at the 2017 reservations landscape. It was made up of essentially the same major players — a legacy brand — OpenTable — and its challengers, having graduated from upstart operations to viable business. But even in the short span of a year, the landscape has changed significantly thanks to shifts on a corporate level, acquisitions, and the popularity of new technology.
Late Friday, news broke that Resy had acquired competitor Reserve in a not-too-shocking consolidation move. After four years of working to differentiate themselves in the market, it seems both Reserve and Resy's CEOs have conceded that their companies weren't so different, after all.
"Reserve and Resy share the same passion for restaurants and operate on the exact same basic principle of offering cutting-edge technology at a fair price," Reserve CEO Greg Hong told Skift Table. "We both view the restaurants on our platforms as partners, not just customers, and now we don't have to get in each other's way by competing for the same partners and instead can move faster together."
Resy CEO Ben Leventhal said, "Reserve, like Resy, has spent the last four years working with amazing restaurants... [Greg] and I joke that we’ve been in the same trenches for the last four years."
Leventhal said that a transition team will look at the two technologies side by side, implementing the best of each for all Resy restaurant partners, now totaling 4,000 domestically. Perhaps a bigger win for Resy is the market share it will gain in Reserve-heavy cities where it had less of a presence, like Chicago and Boston
