2014: We wish you a successful and happy New Year

We have made a bunch of improvements in the latest release, as well as hunted down and fixed some bugs. The source code has been completely re-assembled for performance  enhancements throughout.

Online Gift Vouchers have replaced gift cards at Pied à Terre

For someone who has everything, this is a wonderful gift.

Simple choice and immediate processing. Ideal for last minute gifts. Easier than sending flowers (only email address required). 24 hour minimum booking availability promise.

The perfect treat for special occasions and business partners. Reservation feature ensures that they receive their dinner exactly on a specific date, even during one-day visits from overseas.

Today a new London's Michelin star Brasserie Chavot and Michelin starred Alyn Williams at the Westbury placed our gift voucher widgets on their websites. 

The links to Bookingrid gift voucher widgets (oFrames) are accessible under the Reservations entries from the website menus. The same offers are also available on Bookingrid and luvSpoon.

- Sergey

luvSpoon.com - a brand-new gift marketplace

We are delighted to announce that luvSpoon.com, a new marketplace for bookable gifts, now operates in public beta mode in London.

luvSpoon makes sending a fine restaurant meal as a gift as easy as sending flowers!

joinluvspoon.com

Shall we look for innovative marketing techniques?

"Traditional marketing techniques deliver ever-decreasing results. It's time for a review of how to connect and reach customers" --  Robert Craven.

Full text is available here.

But before looking for something extraordinary, it is worthwhile to review existing opportunities to see if you are taking advantage of it. Gift voucher is a certainly underestimated sales channel within the independent restaurants.

Some people just give an email address for special requests to be sent. Vast majority don't use it at all. This only means they are simply neglecting up to 3% of revenues normally generated by online gift voucher facilities converting the traffic to website into cash.

To help restaurants to explore gift voucher opportunities, we have developed luvspoon.com, a gift voucher aggregation web resource for fine restaurants.

Those who fancy to join and to know more details, please go to the restaurant information resource joinluvspoon.com.

- Igor

Public tech solutions we enjoy in our daily work

As a small and young company, we have to rely on technological solutions more often than on our own hands. Here is a dozen technology services we can't live without.

Bookingrid gifts in Mayfair - some more style

We are happy to announce that four more elegant and attractive London restaurants have recently started using our service. Please meet Michelin starred Alyn Willams at the Westbury, Brasserie Chavot, Tsukiji Sushi and Polo Bar at The Westbury!

Moreover, Online Gift Vouchers exchangeable for posh dinners at Alyn Willams, stylish meals at Tsukiji Sushi Restaurant and relaxed food from Michelin chef Eric Chavot are available now.





Posted by Sergey

A new generation of Bookingrid front-end interface

Meet oFrames based on Bookingrid public API.

Some time ago we started to develop a new generation of consumer front-end interface. Our experimental frames, which we call eFrames, have proved themselves a very reliable tool. But they lacked versatility...

Now a new generation of 'open frames' - oFrames - is introduced. At first glance (try this...), they look just identical to eFrames. However, in contrast to eFrames, oFrames allow several new options. Firstly, our brand new tool for Bookable Gift Vouchers is implemented on oFrames (have a look). Secondly, the look of oFrames can be tuned to specific needs of a particular supplier - good bye frames with knives and forks for spa sessions!

Bookingrid public API allows customers of Bookingrid Web Platform to use custom applications tailored exclusively for them.

Posted by Sergey

Bookable Gift Vouchers

We are going to present Bookable Gift Vouchers soon.

New frames will allow users to choose between booking a meal at available time or buy a gift voucher online.

Preview of the design of the entry frame for Bookable Gift Vouchers

Posted by Sergey

Gift meals are being booked online from abroad

April gift bookings amounted to £500 this month. Geography of bookings was quite intriguing as users from abroad paid for their relatives' celebration dinner.

Now we can say that customers are quite ready to prepay for gift meals booked online.

Posted by Sergey

Now you can give (and receive) a meal at Pied à Terre as an online gift!

Posted by Sergey

The one and only Russian Banya in London offers online bookings with Bookingrid

We have proposed our online booking engine to the one and only Russian Banya in London. Now authentic Russian spa sessions can be booked in real time.

So we now offer bookings of not only restaurant meals but also spa sessions on Bookingrid Web Platform.


Posted by Sergey

Bookingrid: how we handle your payments

Bookingrid accepts payments with PayPal.

Such solution makes our booking system incredibly safe and anonymous because we do not require your personal details other than your email address to confirm your booking.

We don’t need your payment card details and we do not store your personal data other than your ID in our system. We are able to make refunds to the same source you use with your PayPal account. Such solution makes our booking system incredibly safe and anonymous!

Regardless when you make a payment to us, we transfer your money to the restaurant in lump sums before or after it happens. Hence there is no need to wait until your money reach the restaurant. Our fees payable by restaurants are also regularly invoiced to the restaurants and offset against the bulk payments.

If you are unsatisfied with the service provided by the restaurant, we refund your money and withhold the payment to the restaurant. 

If you are unsatisfied, we settle your claim. We refund your money and retain our payment to the restaurant.

Posted by Sergey

Bookingrid: club for those who deserve more and get more

All our partner restaurants are ready to encourage those customers who prepay. The least they can do for you is to offer more for your money. 

Working with Bookingrid, all our partner restaurants are ready to encourage those customers who prepay. Being guaranteed from no-shows, restaurants prefer making rewards to those who trust them. Restaurateurs can compliment loyal customers in several ways.

You can come late and still get the booked table, which is virtually impossible for free online bookings.

The least that they can do for you is to offer more for the same money. For the same price you can enjoy better wine and finer dishes. You can also come late and still get the booked table, which is virtually impossible for free online bookings. Chef’s tables and first-class tables are offered for prepaid bookings with us as well.

For the same price you can enjoy better wine and finer dishes. Sometimes this looks like an impressive discount.

You can easily find amounts of savings highlighted in Bookingrid services. 

Best available offer with savings - for a particular date - as shown in the calendar

Example of offer with savings

Bookingrid: at your service

We base our service on agreements with restaurants. Restaurants publish their offers in our system and entitle us to receive money for them. To make it possible, we strive to build open and straight relations with our partners.

We remove the risk that loyal customers pay extra for those who book and never show up. 

We plug the economic leverage which motivate restaurants to make offers to their customers. If you pay for your booking in advance, you’re rewarded because the restaurant eliminates the risk of no-show. Otherwise, customers eventually pay extra for those who book and never show up.

Also, if the restaurant charges higher prices for booking at busy times, it can offer lower prices during quieter times. Discount coupons are not suitable for this. With us restaurateurs can continuously vary prices to fill their dining halls.

With us restaurateurs can continuously vary prices to fill their dining halls, rather than discount their services.

With us restaurants do not drop the quality of their services. You receive more for the same money. 

The offer price - i.e. the price you have to prepay to make your booking - can be different from the price of the meal. The latter is the advertised price redeemable against the booked service, meal & drinks. Restaurateurs can easily vary the sums of required prepayments making them different from the advertised prices stated in the titles of their offers.

Fully booked? Again?!

Paying bookings with us, you can get - even at short notice - those tables which are fully booked otherwise.

This is an effect of variable pricing as well. 

We have agreed with all our partner restaurants that the entire advertised price is always deducted from the bill. This enables you to pay the bill decreased by the advertised price of your meal. Such deductible price is stated in the title of any paid offer. For instance, for ‘Dinner £100 for 2 at…’ the amount redeemable against the offered service, meal and drinks is £100. 

The advertised price - which is deductible from the bill - is stated in the title of an offer, e.g. ‘Dinner £100 for 2 at …’ 

Academic Research: Dealing with No-shows

A recently published piece of academic research by two PhD candidates at Wharton School aims at offering restaurants a recommendation on how to deal with problem of no-shows.

"The average no-show rate for restaurants in big cities is around 20%, and for an industry with margins as low as 3% to 5%, no-shows can lead to significant losses especially when restaurants are turning away customers waiting outside." (Reddy, 2012)

Two possible remedies were considered in this paper: to punish no-shows by charging fees and to encourage show ups by giving discounts.

As a result of their paper the researchers make three main suggestions to restaurants.

1. "First, we suggest that restaurants should charge no-show customers a penalty equal to the price they charge customers who show up". There are already high-end restaurants such as the Chef's Table in Brooklyn Fare that currently charges a no-show penalty equal to the price of the meal.
2. "Second, we advise that incentives should be given to reservation customers to encourage them to show up. In other words it is optimal for restaurants to give discounts to customers who commit to pay the now show penalty by making a reservation [...]."
3. "In particular, when the market size becomes greater than a certain threshold, it is optimal for the restaurant to operate as a pure walk-in restaurant."

Implementing these three recommendations will result in an economic benefit for restaurants.

"In numerical examples, we found that a combination of the no-show penalty and price discrimination strategies brings about a 20% profit increase for a realistic range of parameter values."

Download the research

Posted by Wlad

First Class Restaurant Bookings

New publication on the GoalEurope

Recently there has been published a new article about us on the GoalEurope, a company which provides advisory services in the area of nearshore software development in Eastern Europe.

First of all the article gives a short overwiev of about Bookingrid's variable pricing model and the opportunity to sell reservations on the secondary market. Moreover the author of the article points out that from her point of view the discount system might work well not only in big cities like London, but also for example in Germany too, "where even upper-middle-class citizens carry brick-size voucher books with them just in case to get discounts in various places."

To read the full article, please click here.
Posted by Wlad

First booking sold

The first booking has been sold for restaurant Maurizio's at Rickmansworth during a marketing campaign through Facebook which was initiated to find the ideal pricing strategy for this class of restaurants. Consequently this fact gives us the awareness that our interface is handy for consumers' usage. We will carry on collecting statistics which will help us to find the most beneficial pricing schemes for our users.
Posted by Wlad