Empowering Concierges With Better Tools and Rewards!
Big Concierge is a private reservation and referral system built by Reservation Genie exclusively for concierges and hotel employees. It enables you to book real time reservations for guests, give them insider access to perks, and earn rewards at the same time. Plus it's loaded with smart tools that make being a concierge easier and more rewarding.
Other reservation systems seem focused on charging cover fees. We're all about smart tools that encourage customer loyalty, measure your advertising, and grow your referrals.
What Does the Genie Have to Say?
We love the internet and all the smart ways you can use it to generate more business. On the Reservation Genie Blog we share ideas on getting more out of your online marketing.
Read this blog to learn how to charge for reservations. Our new ticketing system will let you charge a $25 per person deposit for Valentine's Day, sell Prix Fixe Menu tickets, and even sell tickets with and without alcohol add on. ...read more
Read this blog for ideas about how restaurants can use reservations to help maximize customers during covid transition periods that limit capacity to 25% and 50%. ...read more
With Covid-19 causing a nationwide shut down of dining rooms, we decided to help your restaurant clients out with a commission free online ordering tool for restaurants. ...read more
We created a way to help our clients improve their review site ratings on popular review sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google, and Facebook. We automatically send a text message to all customers the day after their reservation asking them to rate their experience. If the outcome is less than 5 stars, we ask for feedback and post those comments in a report. If it's 5 stars, we encourage customers to write a review on the sites above....read more
Reservation Genie released a virtual gift card tool for our clients today. We manage many of our clients websites and will add a snazzy promotion to your website for you. Other clients are welcome to add it themselves. The tool works with the help of industry leading online merchant solution Stripe. After you set up a Stripe account and link it to Reservation Genie, all it takes is adding a Gift Cards button to your homepage and pointing it at your personal gift card tracking link in a process very similar to adding a reservations button. ...read more
Restaurant owners can now promote their restaurant off peak hours with Diamond Tables. Reservation Genie rolled out a new website for members called the Diamond Tables Club that focuses exclusively on promoting slow days and times at restaurants with a special incentive for customers. The system is designed to combat known issues with Open Table's 1000 point table model, weak customers from concepts like Groupon, and the poor sales + bad reviews associated with restaurant week promotions....read more
We routinely rebuild and optimize our clients’ websites as part of a upgrade package we offer. Reservation Genie benefits when our clients have good websites as that leads to more reservations and happier customers. So we do it for a lot less than your typical web design shop. The first step is to audit your current site and see where there's room for improvement. ...read more
Nick Gray, a Zerve customer, reported they are shutting down. The Wall Street Journal confirmed it. Zerve offered a unique tour reservation system that was loved by many tour operators and now their customers may be forced to find a new system quickly. Reservation Genie can offer a quick alternative with unique concierge management tools to help you manage your tour business....read more
RESERVATION GENIE = RESERVATION GENIUS!
We measured total reservations per month over a 2 year period for several restaurants using Reservation Genie and Open Table. All restaurants saw an increase in total reservations of 15 - 25% per month, year over year....read more
Restaurants can increase customer visits per year using Reservation Genie's loyalty tools that merge Automated Email Marketing with a Restaurant Loyalty Program that is based on completing reservations. Why put an Open Table widget on your website when they steer your customers towards your competitors that pay premiums to be featured as 1000 point tables? Reservation Genie will drive them back to your restaurant. ...read more
We recently rolled out our new Search & Filter platform in our primary cities. This is most notable in New York City where restaurants are working together to support a reservation system that doesn't lead to cover fees from patrons regardless of how they book. There you can search for available tables by date, time, and party size as well as filter results by cuisine and neighborhood. ...read more
We're seeing a lot of restaurants getting their Google Business Profile Hijacked by online ordering companies, mobile app ordering, and social media promoters. This effectively drives website visitors from your site to theirs and is the smartest black hat search engine optimization technique I've seen in awhile....read more
Courting concierges to send their guests to your business requires building a relationship. A lot of restaurants think that by passing out free appetizer cards concierges will suddenly start sending them hundreds of customers every week. While offering a guest perk to concierges is something we highly recommend, it's more about building a relationship with the concierge. You have to ensure them their guests will have a great experience and demonstrate that you appreciate their referrals. ...read more
Our Mobile Optimized Restaurant Reservation System helps lower Open Table fees by reducing friction associated with managing two inventories and enables restaurants to get the best of both worlds. Now every manager can access and manage reservations from their phones as well as block their inventory when they get slammed. Restaurants managing two systems are seeing an average increase of 20% in overall bookings....read more
Open Table can turn into an addiction for restaurants...financially pleasurable in the beginning, but a resulting in a long term dependency that results in paying for the regular customers with no net gain in business. Just say no to the Open Table booking widget and try the Reservation Genie Rehab for your Open Table addiction....read more
Building a free booking community takes time and initiative. Why send your customers to a system that will incentivize them to visit your competitors when you can send them to one that encourages them to come back to your restaurant? It all starts with adding a restaurant booking widget to your website. Adding one of these to your website can help you lower cover fees, drive repeat business, increase reservation conversion, and build a free booking community at the same time....read more
We didn't mean to get into the restaurant website design business. It started out with just helping a client add a reservations link to their website. Some were concerned they were being overcharged by web designers and couldn't tell if they were being sold useless bells and whistles. We eventually decided to offer it to clients for $500 a website....read more
I wasn’t too surprised a couple of weeks ago when Yelp bought SeatMe. I mean, I was surprised they paid 12.7 million for a system with 104 restaurant clients as that comes to about $121k per restaurant. But I was surprised to see Open Table buy Rezbook yesterday. Mostly because with 2000 restaurants and the price per restaurant set by the recent SeatMe purchase implies the going rate would be 242 million. ...read more
We have been building a restaurant table management software alternative to Open Table by adding layers to the concept over time. Our version is responsive, which means that it works on any device. That means you can use it on an Ipad, Android tablet, laptop, regular computer, or a 23" All-in-One touch screen computer (our favorite option)....read more
Open Table benefits by getting more people to skip the restaurant’s website entirely and book directly through Open Table. There they can steer customers towards 1000 point tables and rake in even higher profits. The trick is drive as many people as possible to book directly through your website where they will cost less than booking directly through the Open Table website. This blog posts talks about how....read more
We manage websites for a lot of our clients. Several have been approached by web designers encouraging them to spend heavily on a custom built mobile optimized website. While that may be a worthwhile investment if the price is right, in most cases mobile users only need a few key features. We were able to build all of those using data we already store in Reservation Genie. So we went rolled it out as a perk for being a Reservation Genie customer. ...read more
The online marketing game can be a little overwhelming for restaurant owners. I feel the same way in a kitchen. It starts with learning to use Google Analytics to measure your website performance. But since stats are really only as useful as the data you compare them to, and even if you have Google Analytics set up already, you need a comparison test to truly gauge your results. So, we sampled 10 of the restaurant websites we manage and put together some metrics to give you something to measure your results against. ...read more
We decided to offer a 90 day free trial to restaurants that have left Open Table as a way to explore Reservation Genie risk free. We figure restaurants that left Open Table probably didn't like their billing structure, so our $49 monthly fee and lack of cover fees from regular customers might appeal to them. The 90 day free trial will give them time to see that customers are A-OK booking reservations through other systems (the end result for customers is the same...they just want a reservation). Restaurants are so nervous they'll lose business that they feel trapped by Open Table. ...read more
We overhauled our reporting section today and added interactive graphs that allow you to view your data in interesting and insightful ways. If Peter Drucker is right, and what gets measured really does get managed, then our goal is to give management a few more resources and some added transparency. We rolled out new reporting pages for all the following reservation types:...read more
We updated our VIP system today so that it rewards the top 10 most active customers with VIP perks at participating venues. The idea is to combine the gamification principles behind successful concepts like Foursquare and Gowalla with discounts for loyalty in a way that benefits both the customer AND THE RESTAURANT.
We don't charge a percentage of the deal like Groupon or cover fees like Open Table; restaurants give perks directly to the customer. By eliminating the middle man, restaurants can afford to be more generous, which translates into better deals for guests over time. Because at least one visit at regular prices is required to become a VIP, this new program also eliminates the attraction of "couponers" who move from deal site to deal site looking for bargains....read more
