The trend in online reviews driving more bookings in the travel industry is now starting to happen in the restaurant industry. According to a recent study by Comscore 79% of people who have visited a restaurant in the last 3 months considered online reviews to be very influential in their decision to visit. What was also interesting is that user reviews were given more influence than professional reviews (82% vs 69%). Power to the people , huh. Its not just about restaurants either it talks about several categories. Check out the release here
Booking Angel gives restaurants a way to tap into this opportunity. We will help convert more of these people reading ratings into customers. So which restaurants are getting the Bookings and how do restaurants tap into this opportunity? Our restaurants vary in size and style we have 3 hat fine dining restaurants like Tony Bilsons restaurant Bilsons through to family owned local restaurants …. Some of our restaurants have received over $50,000 worth of new business others only get a few bookings a month. What is fair about our service is that restaurants only pay for each booking they receive…. It gives restaurants a way to start to experiment with their online advertising. If the initiatives they are trying aren’t resulting in more bookings they will know and can start trying something else.”
Peter Barker Owner of the Pink Peppercorn restaurant in Darlinghurst said “The initiatives Booking Angel recommended resulted in about 30 extra bookings a week. That was around 80 extra covers.”
Pink peppercorn is typical of most Australian restaurants they either don’t take online bookings or take a long time to respond to customers when they email them. Booking Angel overcomes this problem as the instant somebody makes an online booking at the restaurants own website or at a website such as Eatability the restaurant receives a phone call and they just press 1 to accept the reservation or 2 to reject. The restaurant receives all the customers details and just records the details in their usual booking diary. They don’t need any special equipment just a telephone.
Tags: comscore, Online Reviews, Research, statistics
