Could online booking be the next money maker
Monday, March 26th, 2007I have just read an article on TechCrunch about online booking companies. These are companies that are trying to be more than just online table booker’s (like OpenTable). They are aiming to provide a service for the many types of business out there that require bookings.
Anyway, it got me to thinking. What benefits could restaurants (and other businesses, buts lets just say restaurants for now) get from online booking. The obvious is more bookings, but I thought, well they only have so many tables (or employee’s since all service businesses are constrained by employee’s). So why would they want to pay money to get reservations when they already get them for “free” over the phone?
Then it occurred to me, imagine if you could be an affiliate for a restaurant. Suddenly it could be well worth the effort of some personality to recommend a restaurant. Suddenly a restaurant could be booked 2 weeks, 2 months in advance. That means suddenly you could charge twice as much for a meal, attract the type of people that spend more on everything. Profits could double, triple, quadruple. Well you get the idea.