Skift Take
Analytics have become an indispensable feature of table management software programs, and OpenTable's latest update is on par with what we're seeing across the board.
— Kristen Hawley
Guest-facing reservations are just one part of the reservations service puzzle. Another: restaurant-facing products aimed to help restaurants manage their tables and, increasingly, guest relationships.
OpenTable has just announced a major update to its Guest Center product for restaurants: more business intelligence tools aimed to give restaurant operators more insight into the data the surrounds daily operations like booking, customer relationship management, occupancy, and more.
Guest Center is OpenTable’s table management software. It also contains guest notes and profiles, recently able to be shared across locations of the same restaurant group, aimed at helping restaurants enhance the diner experience. Now, OpenTable has added on an another layer, allowing restaurants to better analyze data, optimize operations, and make smarter business decisions based on their own unique situation.
“With Guest Center we can be nimble and turn the nobs more efficiently on our end,” said Hetal Shah, owner of San Francisco’s August (1) Five restaurant.
“Numbers don’t lie,” added Adam Luna, the restaurant’s assistant general manager.
“Our goal is to give restaurants the insights they need to make well-informed decisions affecting their business,” Prasad Gune, OpenTable senior vice president of product, said in a statement. “The business intelligence suite offers at-a-glance dashboards showing both past performance and trend analysis which helps restaurants manage their operations, adjust their staffing schedules, and tailor their marketing efforts — all in real time.”
New Functionality
The new tools aim to enhance a number of aspects of the dining experience. Occupancy analysis measures trends from month to month and year to year, helping restaurants identify patterns in bookings and foot traffic. Booking insights give more context in where diners are coming from. Referral insights track where guests are coming from (a hotel concierge, for example.) There’s also an associated restaurant owner app and monthly reports that detail overall performance.
OpenTable also says to expect more functionality soon; including a first time guest and visit frequency report, and covers and reviews analysis.
OpenTable is still the unquestioned market leader in the reservations space in terms of size, covering over 45,000 restaurants with 25 million seated diners per month. But at its product summit last month, fast-growing competitor Resy announced new tools for operators including Resy Fly, helping floor managers optimize space and table turns.
