SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 17, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OpenTable, Inc. (Nasdaq:OPEN) (www.opentable.com), a leading provider of free online reservations for diners and guest management systems for restaurants, today announced a new version of its Electronic Reservation Book with new features designed to increase ease of use while allowing restaurants to provide superior service to their guests and seat more diners in their restaurants.
Version 9.0 offers a more intuitive view of reservations across shifts, more availability for large parties booking reservations, greater control over turn times for individual parties, deeper integration with the restaurant's POS system and increased content customization for diner confirmation emails. The broadest changes come from the addition of the Flex Mode, which enhances system navigation and creates a more thorough representation of table availability.
"Built on 12 years of experience, the latest version of our software is designed to help our restaurant partners fill more seats, while taking the guesswork out of managing front-of-house operations," said Mike Dodson, senior vice president of sales, OpenTable. "The new Flex Mode can automatically combine tables to meet demand, while protecting the restaurant from overbooking."
Flex Mode will enable restaurant staff to:
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Manage seatings and reservations without the guesswork. The new Grid View provides a spreadsheet-like interface of a shift, displaying every reservation booked and the corresponding turn times. Turn times can be adjusted on the fly in order to more accurately reflect availability, and availability sheets are now automatically created from the restaurant's tables and seats, allowing staff to more efficiently manage walk-ins and same-day reservations.
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More easily book larger parties. Restaurants can now tell OpenTable which tables are combinable, allowing them to book large party reservations across multiple tables without the risk of overbooking during the shift.
- Interact with reservations more intuitively. Reservation details are now more easily viewable from the Floor View, allowing staff to book reservations without ever leaving the Floor View.In the Grid View, table assignments can be moved by simply dragging and dropping.
"I have absolutely experienced an increase in efficiency when handling reservations," said Michael Kapash, general manager and partner at LarkCreekSteak in San Francisco. "Our ability to take larger reservations is now so much easier, cleaner and faster with this new version of software."
This upgrade is free to all existing OpenTable customers. The new software is available now to restaurants in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
About OpenTable, Inc.
OpenTable is a leading provider of free, real-time online restaurant reservations for diners and reservation and guest management solutions for restaurants. The OpenTable network delivers the convenience of online restaurant reservations to diners and the operational benefits of a computerized reservation book to restaurants. OpenTable has more than 14,000 restaurant customers, and since its inception in 1998, has seated more than 160 million diners around the world. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and the OpenTable service is available throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.
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