You may be a restaurant of 30 covers or less and may not even have high volumes everyday.  You may hardly get reservations as most of your guests just come in unannounced. In this scenario if someone comes to you suggesting you upgrade from a paper reservation diary to a computerised one, you may just think of it as a complete waste of time and money.

By hesitating to upgrade you may be left behind in this day of Apps and high speed internet and eventually loose customers and revenue to your competitors employing technology to entice your customers away.

So why should you invest in an efficient restaurant reservation system or table management system?

Capture bookings from your website

Most restaurant and café’s have their own website but how many actually encourage their customers to book from the website.

Most Reservation Management Systems (RMS) come with a built in online booking widget.  This widget can be easily added to your website and suddenly transforms your website from a passive to an interactive site.

Your customers can now book tables in a few simple clicks at a time and place of their convenience.  Studies have shown that restaurants offering booking facilities on their website are more likely to be used by customers than those where the only way customers can reserve a table is via a phone or an email.

Offering convenience to your customers is key and the booking widget is an important step towards achieving it.

Pay nothing for the bookings coming from your website

Beware of the companies that offer you a free booking widget for your website.  In return they will charge you anywhere between 25p to £1 for every booking that comes from your website.

In the name of offering convenience these companies will then get a steady source of income from your website at your expense.  You will spend all the money to make your website visible on google search and these companies will reap the benefit.

They know that once the booking widget is installed the website the number of bookings will increase exponentially and you will end up paying hundreds of pounds every year to them for their ‘Free’ Booking widget.

On the contrary there are many solutions available in the market where for a one time charge you end up owning the booking widget and pay nothing for any number of bookings coming through your website ever again.

A simple cost comparison:

A restaurant with 30 covers uses Booking widget and pays 50p commission for every cover booked through it. Assuming that 5 (a very conservative estimate) covers are booked every day.  That would mean paying the company:

• £2.50 a day or
• £76 a month or
• £912.50 per year

Whereas for a lesser one-time payment you can buy the booking widget and recover the cost within 6 months of usage.

Sync the booking widget with the Reservation Management System

Some of these widgets are even synced with the Reservation Management System offering real time booking options to your clients.

The biggest advantage of this is that the entire booking process is automated with zero intervention from the restaurant managers.

The customers are able to make bookings and get confirmation emails instantaneously.

The bookings are pushed to the reservation diary, not requiring any manual entry.

The customers even get automated reminder emails regarding their upcoming booking, thereby reducing last minute cancellations and improving yield.

The system allocates tables automatically reducing the time spent by restaurant managers in this laborious process and actually use that time to pay more attention to guests.

The Booking Widget and the Reservation System share the same database.  This enhances tracking of customer usage and spending patterns.

It also enhances repeat customer recognition when the booking is made.

Advantages of using a Computerised Reservation Management System (RMS)

Many companies sell their RMS touting 100s of features.  It is important to understand that most restaurants and Café’s will not end up using all the features of a system in their lifetime.

So while choosing the system, from the many available in the market, it is important to feel comfortable by the user interface and thoroughly test the main features.

Do not get swayed by the many features, also let a few key members of the team try and test it thoroughly before committing to buy.

Feature	Paper Reservation Diary	Reservation Management System
Easy to add a booking
Easily edit a booking
No internet connection needed
No monthly cost
Records are computerised
Data is searchable
View Guest Profile
View Guest History
View Customer usage patterns
Automated Table allocation
Auto recall of repeat customer details
Access a suite of powerful reports
Export mobile data to bulk SMS systems
Use emails to send newsletters
Never loose data
Reservations accessible from anywhere in the world
Send automated email for booking confirmation and booking reminders
Send automated SMS for booking confirmation and reminders
Send automated emails or SMS to solicit feedback
Waitlist booking management system
Generate reservation list within a range of dates
Stop Booking process in a few clicks
Audit trail of who took bookings and made changes to it.
Record customer preferences for easy recall
Have a visual view of the restaurant status at any given point.  Easier to assess availability
Integration with POS for real time status view of tables

As the above table clearly demonstrates there are not many benefits to using a PRD even for a small restaurant as the continued usage of the RMS will result in:

• Increased bookings
• Increase in footfall
• Enhance customer recognition
• Increase in revenue

The resultant increase in revenue completely justifies the small monthly investment in the RMS.  Periodic updates in features, user interface and integration with 3rd party systems will provide the user with an updated and rich system unlike the paper diaries.