The Battle for Diner Loyalty Begins with Reservations

Are diners more loyal to their favorite restaurants or loyal to the method they use to reserve a table? That’s the fundamental question for consumer-facing reservations services competing for diner loyalty. While two-thirds of restaurant reservations still happen on the phone, the third-party reservations services that support restaurants continue to work to make the digital experience more appealing. Digital reservations come through a few different pipelines: directly with the restaurant, usually through a widget on its website; through a reservation service’s app, like OpenTable, where a diner can see all available restaurants on any given reservations network, and, increasingly, third-party partners like Google and Facebook, who work with the existing reservations services to offer reservations via search or recommendation. (If you’ve heard the buzz about Instagram offering in-post reservations, it’s likely on this model as opposed to Instagram working with restaurants dir