January 13, 2014
Mobile Restaurant Reservation System Lowers Open Table's Fees & Boosts Reservations by 20%
More and more restaurants are linking Reservation Genie to their website instead of Open Table to minimize the long term costs of Open Table and maximize customer loyalty through Reservation Genie. Restaurants built the Open Table community by adding their booking widgets to their website. Proactive restaurants are taking a stand and replacing those widgets with Reservation Genie widgets and investing in a sustainable reservation system that doesn’t lead to higher invoices over time. In major cities, if a restaurant is located in an area with a lot of visitors (meaning near hotels), they are encouraged to remain on Open Table, but link to Reservation Genie on their website. This combination lowers the total cost of reservations while boosting overall reservations by an average of 20%
How Does It Lower Open Table Cover Fees?
The single most valuable feature of Reservation Genie is that it never charges covers fees from regular customers. There are tools that help you build a successful concierge referral program" and cover fees are associated with concierge referrals. But the concierge tools are optional and most restaurants are comfortable paying referral fees for guests they wouldn’t otherwise get on their own. It’s paying cover fees for their regulars that ultimately frustrates restaurants. That’s where Reservation Genie takes aim at Open Table. Reservations booked by Patrons (any reservation that is not a concierge referral) never trigger cover fees and 100% of their reservations are included in the low price of $49 per month. It doesn’t matter if the customer books from your website, books through a third party website you connect to Reservation Genie, or comes back to book through the Reservation Genie website in the future. As more of your regulars get used to booking through Reservation Genie, they don’t trigger cover fees.
Get Customers Coming Back More Often
In contrast to the Open Table model that focuses on driving customers towards restaurants willing to pay higher cover fees, Reservation Genie rewards customer loyalty by tracking visits and offering perks for frequent patronage. These perks are given directly to your customer, so there are no middle man fees or profits generated by Reservation Genie. Plus you are in full control of any perks and can get creative with perks that promote your brand.
Full Mobile Optimization
The latest iteration of Reservation Genie enables restaurants to run the entire system from their phone. The flow is different in desktop and mobile views, but both are easy to navigate and intuitive. If you’re reading this on a phone, you can get a feel for the simplicity by watching the Reservation Screen Tutorial here on Youtube where it will open full screen using the Youtube app. For desktop viewers, it’s embedded below.
Link-Based SMS Notifications
This latest rollout also added options to the SMS Notification system that gives restaurants the option to view reservations in text-based SMS notifications or receive a link to the details. You can open those details on your phone to see all the information necessary to manage the reservation, mark reservations No Show or Completed, and even block reservations if you suddenly get slammed.
The recent changes and mobile optimizations are designed to be intuitive and flow naturally across all devices. You can use your phone to manage reservations or invest in a $99 Kindle Fire and mount it at the hostess stand for a more permanent long term solution. Any way you choose to manage things, it’s a great way to control costs and boost customer loyalty while supporting a system working hard to eliminate cover fees. Feel free to reach out with questions about the program or use this link to schedule a demo today.
Ivan Collins
Reservation Genie