Disqus - Latest Comments for mconyers

Re: It Follows: What Is Really Going On With TripAdvisor? | By Simone Puorto – Hospitality Net

Mike Stewart — Mon, 11 May 2020 05:40:40 -0000

"We have a brand recognition egomaniac issue, and this comes up from the top. I mean the top of the top. And around the top's top, there are only yes-men."

Re: Another restaurant reservation system launches here - Crain's dining blog - Crain's Chicago Business

Mike Stewart — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 02:05:17 -0000

Every payment app I have seen in the UK provides for splitting of the check.

See Zapper, Flypay, paybyVelocity...

Re: Reservation Sites

Mike Stewart — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 06:15:16 -0000

Please do not forget ResDiary as a premier supplier of reservation and table management technology

Re: Six Denver restaurants leave OpenTable to save money

Mike Stewart — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:46:59 -0000

Operators should be looking at www.resdiary.com which is completely web enabled and charges a flat fee and is now available in the US (it is in 30 countries globally with 3,900 customer restaurants and placed 4.2m covers into restaurants in January 2015 - with no transaction charges).

Re: Gordon Ramsay: A rival sabotaged my restaurant's big opening night

Mike Stewart — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 08:00:36 -0000

Should have used ResDiary and not OpenTable....

ResDiary would probably not supply FOC though....

Re: New in Capsule - Duplicate checking and task category colors

Mike Stewart — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 10:34:28 -0000

hey cannot find "Calendars & Tasks"

Re: Want To Dine Out? You May Need To Buy Tickets — Or Bid On A Table

Mike Stewart — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 06:47:13 -0000

The functionality to sell tickets has been available in @ResDiary for 8 years - perhaps we have not marketed it too well! We are introducing variable pricing for promotions / fixed price menus and already have developed online payments from mobile via Stripe.

Re: The Reverse Yelp: Restaurants Can Now Review Customers Too

Mike Stewart — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 02:57:10 -0000

For the record Dimmi is powered by ResDiary in Australia under licence.

ResDiary operates in 25 countries and is 100% owned by a private independent company based in the UK with associate companies in Australia and New Zealand.

The ResDiary system provides multiple custom fields for "customer types" and a free text box for "customer comments" - as does almost every other restaurant management system.

ResDiary does not make recommendations on how these fields or comments should be used and the settings are determined by the authorised restaurant management of the ResDiary or ResDiary licensee's client restaurant.

Re: OpenTable gobbles up online reservation service Rezbook, partners with Urbanspoon

Mike Stewart — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 08:45:09 -0000

Interesting that www.rezbook.com redirects to UrbanSpoon...you would have thought OpenTable would have tied that down..

Re: TripAdvisor Roadmap: How it Wants to Own the Travel Cycle

Mike Stewart — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 08:08:41 -0000

There is a slight problem with malicious and unvalidated reviews. TA needs to close this loop on this.

Re: The Desk Book | Development Hub by ross_vernal

Mike Stewart — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 08:55:30 -0000

I wish I was as well organised!

Re: Should Groupon Be Dumped On? - TheStreet

Mike Stewart — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:08:38 -0000

$11 Billion! Wow!

Re: Don’t Depend on iPhone Clock’s Alarm on January 2 [UPDATED]

Mike Stewart — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 06:12:50 -0000

Android alarm Clock sometimes fails - definitely caused me to miss a flight once

Re: Restaurant 2.0 reservation system challenges OpenTable

Mike Stewart — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:37:15 -0000

Hi Tomer

Great functionality - all standard in Restaurantdiary for years.....and there is more you are missing....

Best regards

Mike

Re: OpenTable and Restaurant Marketing

Mike Stewart — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:06:05 -0000

How much money do you think Livebookings will "burn" in America?

Can they afford the cost of entering the US market?

Are they even returning a profit in Europe (they are doing a "Gordon Ramsay" with their accounts in the UK - 5 months late and counting)?

They have decided to attack the American market at the height of the recession - I am at a loss to see the business logic in this.

Re: OpenTable and Restaurant Marketing

Mike Stewart — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:40:03 -0000

I have just got to say that's the best quote I have ever seen on Opentable - I am in the UK and am sure their "churn" rate is very high - ".......every restaurant that had not tried openTable was very interested in it and every restaurant that had tried opentable had cancelled their service!"

Opentable as a brand and a marketing exercise is outstanding - still the company has lost $57m since start up and I have heard some other interesting quotes but do not think it would be wise to put them in writing.

Why would smart operators (and not every restaurant owner or operator is smart) willingly pay commission on bookings from their own web site and why would smart operators allow email marketing material about their competitors to be sent to their customers?

In the UK Opentable are actually not charging for setup, training or install when coming up against competition - and their last argument against being removed from an account is "we regularly bring you XX customers per month and that's £xx operating profit you will lose on annual basis if you stop using Opentable" - it's a facile and purely subjective argument.

Opentable are also great at producing pretty pdf's showing extravagant and ludicrous ROI and financial cost analyses based on the above assumption.

I have got to admit I am not a fan and, having had a recent first hand experience of their marketing and sales techniques, I have no respect for Opentable as a company either.

Re: OpenTable and Restaurant Marketing

Mike Stewart — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:14:37 -0000

Some thoughts

If you are a restaurateur and have a strong offer and strong demand it may be best to spend your marketing dollars to drive traffic to your own web site / reservation team and use your own reservation solution - there are several ASP solutions available now - with in built table management, restaurant yield management, CRM and e-marketing and they usually provide a free hyperlink for the operator's own web site.

There are Guestbridge, ReservationGenie, Efficient Frontiers, TableBoss and many others,

Build your own brand!

If you use Opentable you will find that if you are full then reservation enquiries are being switched to your nearest competitor and you might even find Opentable marketing your biggest competitor on a mail shot.

Despite what Opentable would like you to think their system is distinctly local as opposed to global - to sell it requires traditional selling skills and routes to market are traditional. Overheads that come on two legs are very expensive and Opentable needs lots of them.

Every new market could be a battlefield with the only outcome a Pyrrhic victory.

It cannot be assumed Opentable will ever return a 17% margin in Europe as they have done in the US (they have lost $57m since start up). In Europe, there are different dining and reservation habits, as Opentable has found out in France and Spain and there are strong comeptitors in Livebookings, Toptable and restaurantdiary.com.