OpenTable, Inc. (OPEN) Has Your Reservations

OpenTable, Inc., besides being the leading supplier of reservation, table management, and guest management software for restaurants, is also the operator of www.OpenTable.com, the world’s most popular website for making online restaurant reservations.

OpenTable serves restaurants around the world, replacing the long-standing pen-and-paper method of taking reservations and managing tables with automated hardware and software. A major side benefit of their system is that it allows restaurants to use all that previously lost information to build diner databases, valuable for targeted email marketing and improved guest recognition.

The website, on the other hand, services individual diners, as well as concierges and administrative professionals. It provides a fast and efficient way to find available tables that meet desired cuisine, price, location, and time requirements. The website is available 24/7, connected directly to thousands of computerized reservation systems at OpenTable restaurants. Search results reflect real-time availability, and reservations are immediately recorded in the restaurant’s reservation book – the same book used by the restaurant’s maitre’d.

As an important logical extension, diners can now make reservations on the run with OpenTable’s mobile apps (iPhone, etc.). These applications leverage OpenTable’s already trusted name in the marketplace. They’re obviously convenient for diners, but it’s also valuable to restaurants, reaching previously unavailable consumers at exactly the time they’re considering restaurants. In addition, it allows restaurants to better fill last minute gaps since mobile reservations are usually more immediate. A reservation made at a home computer might be an hour away, but a reservation made on the run, perhaps by someone coming out of a movie just down the street, can fill an open table in ten minutes.

OpenTable, with more than 12,000 customers worldwide, has many distribution partners, including AOL CityGuide, Chicago Tribune’s MetroMix.com, CitySearch.com, DiRoNA, Los Angeles Times’ CalendarLive.com, NYC & Company, Time Out New York, San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.com, WashingtonPost.com, and Yahoo! Inc.