Urbanspoon is getting ready to take on OpenTable, the popular and publicly traded restaurant reservation service. Urbanspoon just started a pilot program with four restaurants in Seattle. Chances are that the company will then slowly expand this service to the rest of the 90+ markets it currently serves. Compared to OpenTable, Urbanspoon offers a fuller range of features for diners, though it is important to note that OpenTable currently offers more features for restaurant owners, though they also have to pay about $300 per month for a dedicated OpenTable terminal.
Sponsor
Both Urbanspoon and OpenTable charge $1 for every reservation made through their systems.
Urbanspoon Has the User Base to Pull This Off
Urbanspoon’s iPhone app has been incredibly successful and is currently getting over 1 million ’shakes’ a day. The app and website started out with only a small set of features. Over the last few months, the company has continued to add features and, at this point, Urbanspoon can easily rival most of its larger competitors in this space.
With only four restaurants in one city, Urbanspoon is clearly still taking baby steps. As the OpenTable IPO has shown, however, this is a highly lucrative market. Urbanspoon already has a large user base and whoever is using the service (and especially the mobile app) is clearly looking to go to a restaurant already. By adding a reservations system, Urbanspoon can offer its users a full range of services, from finding restaurants and checking menus and reviews, all the way to making the actual reservation.
For more info about Urbanspoon’s new reservation system, check out Rebekah Denn’s post at Eat All About It, which we found via the New York Times Bits blog Twitter feed.
Related posts:
- OpenTable Seats One Million Diners Via Mobile Apps Online restaurant reservation site OpenTable has hit a milestone...
- OpenTable Seats 2 Million Diners Via Mobile Apps In less than six months, online restaurant reservation site...
- How OpenTable Could Actually Matter Dot com meltdown survivor and restaurant reservation software company OpenTable...
- IAC Buys UrbanSpoon Based On Good Recommendations UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple...
- BookFresh Is OpenTable For Everything Else In the online reservation space, you probably know about OpenTable....
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.