Traditionally, restaurant table reservations were made in 99% of cases through the establishment’s telephone.
Shortly after i arrive Internet, the different portals of directories or guides, began to innovate and try to get users to manage these reservations through the telephone numbers that they offered, in order to establish themselves in the leadership of the “vertical information portals “
But already in this century, the modus operandi It has changed, you no longer need the restaurant’s telephone number or any portal or search engine to provide it.
Now it is the turn of the online reservation generators, where the restaurant offers its offers and services through them and we, as users with a pc or a smartphone, access the portal and choose, as we like, by place, offer, closeness, etc …
In a recent study that has Diego Coquillat, in your restaurant “the ranch”These data were given to the question they asked their clients by various means:
How do you usually make your reservations in restaurants? And the answer was the following:
Telephone 38% – Web 48% – Mobile Web / App 14%
This way of operating is already exceeding the telephone reserve, difficult to understand without the main players in the national market at this point.
The portals of The fork and Restalo In its analysis of 2014 in this first semester, the use of technology to make web reservations is exceeding the traditional telephone channel by 10%, and this may increase by another 15% if we include the trend of smartphone use for this service .
Thus, we are facing 30% more procedures carried out technologically (65% compared to 35% for the telephone.
In order to conclude which would be the factors of this vertiginous advance of one trend versus another, from the traditional to the technological, we can highlight the following aspects:
- Internet access is cheap, increasingly easy and multi-device. With the arrival of smartphones, it is no longer necessary to be in front of the pc to perform any action …
- The response of the app is immediate, fast and agile, and it is always available, and does not communicate …
- The social changes of the new generations and the entry into play of Social Networks in the field of opinion make technology supplant tradition.
- The advertising media and agencies have focused their business on the Internet, and therefore the relationship between the restaurant and its customers, is trying to be done on-line.
- Ability to generate and distribute promotions, discounts, coupons, etc. Through the web or social networks, they make the offer can be segmented to each client, it is impossible to carry out this individualization in the traditional channel.
- The customer no longer only consumes, he also chooses, thinks and decides. The communication aspect of each restaurant is almost more important than its “dishes”, its website, its content, its online reputation is essential, and what to say about the comments + or – of the forums and RRSS …
So we see how the leisure model is changing and at a speed that 10 years ago was unthinkable, we change the same now in one year than a decade ago in 10.
The future has arrived and the subsistence of each business will depend to a large extent on their ability to adapt to the new forms that this market imposes where customers have taken the initiative, they choose the offer, not the offer chooses them. .