As a restaurant owner, you may be getting tired of how much you pay OpenTable every single month and you have probably noticed that the bill is getting disproportionately higher while the number of reservations is stagnating. In this post, we will explain what is OpenTable's game plan to drive restaurants' OpenTable bills up.
OpenTable pricing model consists of three components: an average of $1K setup\hardware onetime fee, about 200$ monthly subscription fee and from $0.25 to $7.50 per diner per booking reservation fee. Reservation fees vary according to the following rules: $0.25 per diner for reservations that originated from the restaurant's website, $1 per diner for reservations that originated from OpenTable website or mobile app and finally $7.50 per diner for reservations made through OpenTable 1000 point table program. The whole idea of the 1000 point table program is as follow: diner gets 1000 OpenTable reward points for making reservation at certain times of the day and the restaurants have to pay an extra fee for this service. Granted, OpenTable may be helping you to fill tables in slow time but at what cost! To put it another way - restaurants subsidize OpenTable's loyalty program, instead of spending this money to build thier loyal customer's base!
Recently, OpenTable revenues went up compared to same time last year while the number of participating restaurants did not increase proportionally. And the explanation for such dramatic growth is partnerships with companies like Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and Bing. Here is how OpenTable increases its reservation's revenue at restaurant's expense.
