When I recently visited a restaurant trade show, I noticed that there were just as much companies presenting POS systems as there were stands with on-line reservation systems, while I haven’t seen any reservation system on previous visits. When something new comes up that fast, I immediately suspect a hype.

So when talking to the good ol’ POS dealers, I asked them if they had received customer requests for on-line booking systems and whether their systems includes or can be linked to such a tool. As I already expected and according to my own experiences, no-one had received requests for on-line booking systems from their customers, and therefore none of them had included such a tool in their system. Some POS systems did have a bookings screen, and I even found one system that offers an API to connect external applications to the reservation module.

After that I went to the other ’side’ —the on-line reservation providers. I asked them for their experience in the restaurant business and whether they had linked their system to a point of sale. I found that most of these companies were technology driven businesses that only recently entered the restaurant market. With the exception of one —OpenTable—, none of these companies seem to know the way restaurants work. What surprised me even more is that nobody could offer integration with a Point Of Sale system. Restaurants need to install a dedicated terminal using either proprietary software —like OpenTable— or a web browser —like RestaurantDiary.

In my opinion the companies offering on-line reservation systems seem to miss two crucial points: space is scarce in restaurants, restaurateurs don’t want to put in another terminal of it is not absolutely necessary. And if they do, they will place a full POS system, and not a dedicated reservation system. Furthermore, the Point Of Sale is the centre of the restaurant’s automation system. The POS controls stocks, sales and workflow. Having two separate systems is a waste of resources. Client information should be available on the Point Of Sale, since client tracking is important.

So my conclusion is that on-line restaurant reservation systems are indeed hype, generated by techies with no feeling for what is going on inside a restaurant. In my view, restaurant reservation systems do have a place, but not implemented the way it is done now.
First of all, the system should be completely integrated in the POS system, for reasons I have explained above.
Secondly, these systems should target more. I never search the Internet for a restaurant in my home town, and I always phone to make a reservation, since the decision to go to a specific restaurant is usually taken on the street when meeting friends. When I am out of town for business or pleasure and have some time on hand, I never reserve a restaurant, but rather walk around and decide where to enter based on how the restaurant looks. The only time when I could need an on-line reservation system is when I am out of town, am very busy and do not have somebody who is taking care for me —usually my clients select and reserve restaurants. In that case I need a reservation system that:

1. Has data for any place in any country I might be;
2. Let’s me enter my current position and shows me all restaurants sorted on the distance from my current position;
3. Shows me the basic details of the restaurant and comments/recommendations of other users;
4. Preferably it should give me some suggestions based on previous reservations just like Amazon does: people who like restaurant X also like restaurant Y.

In other words: restaurant reservation systems have to be made with the guest in mind and not as an on-line marketing instrument for restaurants.

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