We are considering moving off Open Table. My question is do you use Open Table to search out places to dine or do you use to make a reservation. There fees can be 4 times the competitors. Trying to figure if this is was worth it.
Not really any more. At least in NYC restaurants are so spread across platforms that it no longer covers enough of the options.
Nick - used to use Open Table very regularly, but so many options now that you miss too much if you lock in there. Still think it has the best interface and is easiest to use. Tough choice for the owners…
The people who now own Open Table also own Priceline. Throw them an anchor.
I use Open Table almost exclusively unless a restaurant i want to go to is only on another platform. So I will have had to learn about that restaurant from another source. When we travel, I use it to make reservations in advance. If there isn’t an online way to make reservations, often we just won’t go to that restaurant.l I don’t want to have to make half a dozen phone calls to get a reservation.
Down here the other platforms have no restaurants. So consider that. Meaning someone coming from out of town, who only has Open Table in their market, won’t even know to look on the other platforms for your place. We almost exclusively dine at places that take reservations. The only place i’ll stand on queue for is Galatoire’s.
Personally, I’ve loved Tock during this and have been using it a lot more than I did pre-pandemic. If you were in Chicago, I’d say that would be a strong platform to move to.
I just wonder though if the customers coming to you are as familiar with Tock as those living in the city. OpenTable may well be a PITA for you, but I’d also imagine it’s what is most familiar for everyday people even in the city, much less the nearby burbs.
depends on what type of restaurant you operate. if it’s small and/or usually filled, then opentable is a waste of money bc all you need is a booking platform (low value) vs a marketing value (high value, potentially). but the big nit in all of this is that some large/majority amount of traffic comes from google, not opentable. so the overriding idea that opentable is a marketing platform quickly falls apart. i also believe their pricing paradigm is anti restaurant. the booking platform with the best tech by far is sevenrooms, imo. they have a real focus on development and integrations, which imo is by far the most important for a small business to leverage various tech products. and in some cases you can put your inventory on resy from sevenrooms, but not sure how fleshed out that is. long way of sayin, resy is probably your best alternative to OT. tock is still very much buying experiences and paying for them prior. but they have great tech as well.
The only time I have used opentable is when trying to find a very basic restaurant in a new city to me for a business type lunch or breakfast.
i use opentable to book, not to choose. Mostly as long as a restaurant has some form of online booking, which one wont be a source of friction for me, but once in a while if it is a toss up between two placed, whichever is on opentable will win due to convenience
Open Table has been dead to me ever since they changed their award program. I don’t appreciate them telling me that I have to tell them in advance where I want to cash in. The reduction in point earning by a big 50% decrease didn’t favor my good feelings towards them either.
dh
I need to use my rewards, not a great time to do it.
+1
thank you all.
I only use OpenTable to book, never to choose a restaurant.
And somehow I lost all my OT points so I really don’t care at all about using them.
I use open table to book only, but refer resy. I use and like resy’s notify function and, for me, better perks with resy select. I’d rather have better access to tough reservations than points I never use.
I use resy routinely. Tock is terrible and their technology is clunky and hard to navigate.
but do you use Res to pick a place for you or just to book ?
As another data point for you: our family never uses any reservation platform to pick a restaurant. We will use whatever platform is associated with said restaurant even if that is just a phone call.